


the world you recreate yourself

by ohallows



Series: looking back at the same two kids [1]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Comics)
Genre: (swears and violence and moderate peril), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Slow Burn, THIS IS A PREVIEW OF A FIC I AM WORKING ON, The ‘mature’ rating is just for swears - no sexual content here, but will be completed I PROMISE, incomplete fic, tags will be changed when the fic is done
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2019-10-09 03:46:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohallows/pseuds/ohallows
Summary: Conner's first conscious thought is that his bed is a lot harder than he remembers. The next is that he's absolutely freezing, which doesn't make any sense - Kansas in July might not be a trip to the beach but he definitely shouldn’t feel like there are icicles on the verge of forming on his eyelids.He cracks open an eyelid, groaning and flinching back from the sunlight assaulting him. His hands spread out on the ground, running through the dirt, as Conner sits up and takes in the scene around him. He most definitely isn't in Kansas anymore.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy it begins (also the title is a WIP im gonna maybe change it idk)
> 
> i wanted to play in the sandbox of 'oh what if conner kent came back before superman died and rebirth even happened?' and now i have this pet project. basically, this is an AU that diverges after the whole weird Kon El / Jon Lane Kent arc in the new 52 teen titans run in which conner comes back and makes his friends be normal again. i hate scott lobdell. also babs is oracle again fuck dc 
> 
> uhhhh if something else doesn't super ascribe to canon call it creative license, suspend ur disbelief, and move on that's probably the best option (for example the team refers to the evil superboy as match simply bc it’s easier and also i wanted to make a dumb pun). also i’m not going to reread the 2011 or 2014 titans just to write this fic, i don't hate myself that much
> 
> **updates randomly sorry**

Conner's first conscious thought is that his bed is a lot harder than he remembers.

The next is that he's absolutely freezing, which doesn't make any sense - Kansas in July might not be a trip to the beach but he definitely shouldn’t feel like there are icicles on the verge of forming on his eyelids.

He cracks open an eyelid, groaning and flinching back from the sunlight assaulting him. His hands spread out on the ground, running through the dirt, as Conner sits up and takes in the scene around him.

He most definitely isn't in Kansas anymore.

He's surrounded by a dense forest, trees stretching so far in either direction that Conner can't even sense a town nearby.

Scratching his head, he tries to remember how he got there, but the last thing he can recall is laying down in his room in the Kent's, wondering if Tim was going to come up that weekend and planning out how he can beat Bart at bowling the next time they go.

He might be sleep-flying. Again. God, that would _suck_ , last time he ended up in the Wilson's barn in the cow stall, and Mr. Wilson almost caught him when he came into the barn to milk the cows.

But. There aren't any tracks around him, and this seems to be a bit more in the middle of nowhere and a hell of a lot farther than Mr. Wilson's barn was from his bed.

Slowly he stands up. His entire body feels kinda weak, and his muscles in particular feel like they've been suffering from disuse for a while. Which... wouldn't make sense if he'd just flown there.

Maybe he needs another opinion.

He pushes off the ground and rises above the trees. There's nothing in any direction, which is weird, and his doesn't have his comm. link on him either, which is even more weird considering he's on call this week. He glances down and falls a little bit, distracted.

The ground below him is weirdly smooth. No tracks in any direction, no impact from where Conner had assumed he must have fallen, just a smooth unbroken strip of land. It looks like - like Conner had just laid down there. Wherever _there_ is.

Frowning, Conner flies off to what he thinks is the south based on the sun's position (thank you, pointless wilderness episodes of Wendy the Werewolf Stalker) and after a few minutes of snow and ice and trees he finally spots a column of smoke raising up above the trees and makes a beeline for it.

God, he wishes he had Clark's sense of direction. Big Blue always seems to just know where he is and where he needs to go, which is an endless source of frustration for Conner, but whatever.

It's a factory, which isn't that helpful, but the name sounds French so Conner lines up

the snow, ice, and trees with Canada and turns south, heading for Smallville.

He cheers to himself when he flies over Niagara Falls.

Conner finally, _finally_  spots the farmhouse he's been looking for, and angles downward, landing softly enough to not disturb the cows wandering around the field. There aren’t any cars in the driveway, but he doesn’t let that stop him as he walks up the porch, knocking gently on the door. He doesn’t hear anything inside, but the door’s unlocked. Maybe Ma is in the garden, or had to run into town to get supplies. It’s early, sure, but there could be a number of reasons why she isn’t home.

"Ma? You here?" he calls, letting the screen door fall shut behind him. There's a slight rustling sound from the family room and he sighs in relief, hoping that Ma can maybe clear some of this up. Seriously, she's already raised one super alien, a super clone shouldn't be too much different and maybe something similar happened to Superman when he turned 18.

"Ma?" he says, turning the corner, expecting to see her folding laundry in the corner where she always does. Instead, a cat with no collar sits there, glaring balefully at him. “You’re not Ma.” Well, unless the new supervillain of the week had figured out who either Superman or Superboy were and attacked her in retaliation, but that doesn’t seem likely. And the furniture around the room is all wrong, too, covered in plastic coverings and dust. Conner drags a finger through the dust, sending spores of it up into the air. Not enough to have accumulated overnight, or even in a month.

A pit opens up in Conner’s stomach as he looks around the room. There are no pictures on the wall, except for one in the corner, faces obscured by the dust clinging to the frame. Conner walks over and gently pulls it off the wall, blowing out over it.

Some random woman with dark skin and dark eyes looks back at him, arms around two young girls who have the same smile as her. Conner stares at it, willing it to make sense, and jumps when the cat hisses behind him. The picture falls from his fingers and shatters when it connects with the floor. Glass shoots out across the hardwood and the cat hisses again, backing away jumping out of an open window in the corner of the room.

“What the hell...” Conner mutters, looking around the room. The shape, the house, it’s all the same, but the furniture is all wrong and it looks abandoned for some reason. Shaking slightly, he steps outside the house and glances back. It’s the farmhouse, he knows it is, that’s the barn right behind it. He’s spent enough time here, he knows where he is.

Conner takes off, wondering what the fuck is going on and where Ma is. He takes a millisecond to check the rest of the property, because maybe if he can find Ma he can make some sort of sense of this mess.

He takes a moment to listen for Ma’s heartbeat, but the only heartbeat he actually recognizes in a five-mile radius is his. Well, his and that stupid cat’s, still roaming around the property. Ma always fed the barn cats that would come around in the wintertime, and Conner would help her in return for a fresh apple pie (he would have helped for free, because the cats were cute and he liked spending his time with Ma). And he’s never seen that cat before, at all.

There’s no one else around. No one he knows.

Conner flies to the back forty and sits down. He doesn't really want to leave the farm; it's always been a place of comfort to him, even when Superboy Prime came after him and hurt him and his friends. It's always been the one place he can go to to relax and just... not think anymore.

But it just doesn't make any sense, the furniture and the dust and the cat and just... all of it.

God, it's just like Hawaii, when he thought Rex and Tana and Roxy were leaving him for bigger and better things, and it's been a while since he's felt this insecure. But this whole thing with Ma missing is dredging up some... really unpleasant emotions that Conner really thought he was over. Especially when it came to Big Blue.

"Huh," Conner mutters, standing up, because that might actually be the answer to his problem.

Superman is a target all the time, always being chased after by one villain or another, and it's always possible that someone went after Superman and his family got mixed up in it all. Maybe Conner should talk to Kara - although honestly, that familial relationship is still sometimes in the rocky stages and it doesn't help that Kara doesn't totally trust him most of the time. It's the clone thing, apparently, which is basically the story of his life ( _looking at you, Batman_ ).

Maybe Ma has been targeted too - he thinking he remembers Bart talking about a time when Wally’s wife had been sent to the mirror dimension, and while he doesn’t think Mirror Master is around causing havoc to a random small Kansas town, it could be something similar. Mxyzptlk, maybe. It’s been a while since he’s come around

He'll just find Superman, let him know what's going on, and it'll all be solved.

Easy.

 

\--

 

Not easy. Not in the slightest.

Conner had found Superman in Metropolis (of course), fighting the villain of the week, and figured he could maybe give him a hand. Seemed like Toyman was just causing the usual trouble, breaking through a couple buildings while Superman gave chase. The fight looked like it is going to be over pretty soon, so Conner just lounged against the Daily Planet planet and waited for Clark to take care of the goon.

He could help, but he was honestly pretty tired and Clark looked like he'd got it all handled, so.

Pretty soon, Schott was tied up and in the hands of the cops (for however long that would last) and Conner was cupping his hands around his mouth and yelling "Clark!" in the guy's direction.

He didn't think he'd ever seen the big guy's head whip around that fast. Less than a second later, leaving the cops behind looking a little befuddled and completely ignoring the media clamoring for a shot of Superman saving the day again, the man in question landed on top the planet next to Conner.

"Clark! Man, I am so happy to see you. There's a major issue with Ma, I can’t find her anywhere, and the farmhouse doesn’t look right. What the... hell... right?" Conner said, trailing off uncomfortably, because Superman was eyeing him with distaste, a lot like the look he reserved for scum like Luthor. And he looked... young. Like, really young. Years younger. There weren't any gray wisps in his hair at all and the laugh lines on his face had completely faded.

"I told you you weren't welcome here," he said, and Conner took a step back. He didn't think Superman would ever actually use heat vision or arctic breath on him, regardless of how much he'd pissed him off, but the guy looks just the right shade of angry and Conner doesn't really want to test it right now.

"What do you mean?" Conner asked, and sure, him and Superman don't get along all the time but he likes to think that their relationship was getting a little better, at least to the point where Clark trusted him

with Ma and Pa.

"Leave. Now. I don't want to see you in Metropolis," Clark said, glaring.

"Huh?" Conner said, confused.

"I said, _leave_ ," Clark said, eyes glowing red. It's the only warning Conner gets before he's ducking away with a yelp from two red jets of light aimed at his torso.

He can see Clark still glaring at him with red eyes, so Conner subtly strengthened his TTK and hopped off the edge of the roof. Clark didn’t follow him, and a few moments later Conner watched him speed off in a new direction.

So Superman almost killed him. Makes it, Conner isn't sure, the third time that's happened? Maybe only second. A lot of the memories he had right out of the gate (or, well, _tube_ ) are a bit... skewed, so.

Still, Conner's zero for two, and really doesn't want to hear that Batman's on his tail after his little misunderstanding with Superman, so he decides it's time to man the hell up and find the few people who might still know who he is. He's hoping, at least. His track record isn't all that impressive.

His first thought is to head straight for Titans Tower, burst in and yell for anyone and hope that whatever new gadgets Tim or the new Robin have installed don't blast him on sight. But.

Tim's been doing his own thing for a while, and the probability of him being at the Tower the one time Conner needs him to be is... less than stellar. So he makes an executive decision, and he'll deal with Bart if he's offended later or whatever.

It's almost ridiculously easy for him to track Tim's heartbeat, after having gotten used to it through long nights spent up with him and Bart in Young Justice, and all the nights he spent helping Tim with his pet project of the week. He just closes his eyes and focuses in, ignores the extra sound filtering in through his superhearing and just listens for Tim's heartbeat.

Normally it barely takes him any time at all after he starts looking for Tim, and this isn't any different.

Turns out he's not wrong, and his initial hunch is right (which seems to be a first since he woke up, but at least something is going his way). Tim's nowhere near San Francisco. Conner's superhearing pings him as being somewhere in the general vicinity of New York City - honestly, he's pretty glad it's not Gotham. After being Tim's best friend for years he's gotten relatively good at sneaking around the city and avoiding Batman (Oracle was another story, but she was usually nice enough to not mention anything to Bats as long as he was hanging with Tim), but he's just tired and really doesn't want to have to deal with being stealthy right now.

He leaves Metropolis in the dust as he flies toward New York City as fast as he can, tracking Tim's heartbeat and thanking God that at least something in this upside-down world seems to have stayed the same.

He tracks the heartbeat to NYC. Tim must be on a mission with the Outsiders or hanging with Dick or something similar - it’s a little weird that he isn’t in San Francisco,

especially considering that it’s the weekend. The closer he gets, the stronger the heartbeat; he drops down out of the cloud layer and lands on - a cruise ship? He glances around, confused, before peering inside one of the windows. It looks almost like a game room, but no one’s inside.

The ship itself is a couple of stories tall, which is absolutely ridiculous but something that Conner definitely would have wanted back in Hawaii instead of that dinky little house in the compound or that teeny room at Cadmus.

Shaking his head, he hops up a few floors and peeks inside another window.

Tim is standing inside, silhouetted by the glow of a huge computer monitor. His fingers are tapping on the keyboard as a red dot glows on the screen. His cowl is off, and he's just in a t-shirt and sweats.

Conner blasts through the door, taking care to not blow it off its hinges, and sweeps Tim up in a hug from behind.

Upon reflection, it may not have been his best moment.

Tim freaks out, stifling a yell, and struggles out of his grip, extendable bō staff in his hands and moving in Conner's general direction before Conner can even blink.

It stops about a half-inch from Conner's neck, which is good because Conner knows that Tim loves his staff and it shattering into pieces on impact would be bad for both of them.

"Dude, you have no idea how glad I am to -"

"What the hell are you?" Tim snaps, staff still pointing at Conner's neck. "How did you get in here?"

"What are you talking about, dude, it's me," Conner says, but there's a sick feeling in his stomach. It's just like how Superman looked at him like he was a threat, a villain; seeing that look on Tim's face makes him realize that something might actually be wrong. "Wait, are you _taller_ -"

"I watched you fly away," Tim is snarling, and he doesn't even answer the question, bō staff extended as his eyes track Conner's every move. "I watched you _die_."

Conner shifts uncomfortably but Tim doesn't move, staring him down.

"Tim, we - we've been over this, man." Although, Tim wasn't wearing the cowl and - were those _wings_? Jesus, Tim always hated anything that could be seen as a weakness, of course he made it possible to fly, guess swinging on things wasn't enough for him anymore. Christ.

"What do you mean, we've been over this? You died a month ago. We haven't been over anything!"

Wait - backtrack.

"I only died a month ago?" Conner asks, frowning. "It's been. It's been at least two years, dude."

Unless.

He might have gotten transported back in time, by whatever supervillain of the week who was targeting the Teen Titans, his cousins, or even the old YJ crew. It's happened before, obviously, but not normally to this scale. Plus, it wouldn't explain Superman threatening him. They were past all that - or at least that's what Conner thought.

Plus, he has it on good authority that Tim never had wings during that time period. Just the red-and-black and that nasty cowl. And he has photos to prove it, too.

"Who the hell are you?" Tim says, again, and Conner recognizes his Robin voice coming out in full force, deeper and a lot more threatening. "Are you another clone?"

It takes all of Conner's will not to say 'I'm THE clone!' and give him some good old fingerguns but something in Tim's expression makes him think it might not be all that well-received.

"What do you mean, another clone - did," Conner's eyes widen, "did Luthor - did he make another clone of me this time?"

"What the hell does Luthor have to do with this?" Tim pokes his chest with the bō staff. "You have thirty seconds to tell me who you are and how you _found_  me before I start swinging."

"Shit, shit, okay, my name is Kon El, secret alias Conner Kent, superhero name Superboy, clone of Superman, I was cloned by CADMUS Labs after he died and then I escaped and then he came back and I was in Hawaii for a while but then I moved to Metropolis and then a farm in Smallville and I have a dog, uh, I was a member of Young Justice and then the Teen Titans, and once I died but I came back eventually, and I tracked you by listening to your heartbeat because I've done it before and also I had no clue who else to turn to," Conner says, all in one breath. He knows he's babbling but he also knows _Tim_  and he knows Tim isn't kidding about the 30 seconds and if this is a test to see if he is who he says he is then he's just going to throw as much information as possible out there just in case.

“That’s not possible,” Tim snarls, raising the bō staff up. Conner raises a hand defensively; sure, he’s got TTK protecting his entire body like an impenetrable shield, but Tim has always been able to somehow find the kinks in his armor and land blows that actually _hurt_ , sue him for not wanting to deal with that.

“Wait, wait wait wait,” Conner says. “Why isn’t it possible, what do you mean?”

“Because you’re either dead or you’re an evil clone set on destroying humanity,” Tim

says, eyes narrowing. “We’ve dealt with this before.”

“What are you - dude, you’re my best friend, I swear to God or Batman or whoever the hell you want me to swear on, I’m not some evil clone!”

The bō staff lowers marginally while Conner stares pleadingly at Tim, and he counts it as a victory. “Trust me, I can prove it!”

Tim frowns at him. “What do you mean.” It’s not meant to be a question.

Conner runs a hand through his hair, taking a not-so-subtle step back from Tim. “What if I tell you something that only you would know? What about then?”

Tim stares at him, considering. He drops the bō staff and Conner breathes a sigh of relief.

"Prove it, then," Tim challenges, leaning back against the monitor. "Tell me something about myself."

Conner frowns, because Tim doesn't freaking tell anyone _anything_ and the only reason Conner knows half the stuff he does is because he either forced it out of Tim after realizing his best friend was down or because Superman told him. Normally it was the latter, along with a heartfelt plea from the Boy Scout himself to make sure Rob was okay. Like Conner didn't know how to take care of his best friend.

He knows, maybe, five or six of Tim's actual, closely held secrets, and anything else wouldn't convince Tim that he actually knew him and wasn't just a really good investigative reporter.

"Your dad was killed by Captain Boomerang and you didn't tell anyone about it. Probably because you thought you could handle it, but you never were good at asking for help," Conner says. Tim's expression doesn't change.

"My father and mother are both alive and hidden away for their safety," Tim counters, looking distinctly unimpressed. "Strike one."

Conner stares at him. "Dude. No, there's no way, you would have told me - Tim, Superman told me your dad died. He wouldn't lie."

"Superman doesn't know my parents or my situation."

"Fuck, okay-" Conner runs a hand through his hair. "Uh. When we first moved into the Tower, the second Robin - Red Hood, whatever - broke in and beat the shit out of you. Literally almost left you for dead."

"Jason has been relatively temperamental in the time I've known him." Tim leans forward, arms crossed. "Strike two."

Conner opens his mouth but Tim holds up a finger in warning. "One more strike and you'll be forcibly removed from the room. Tread carefully."

"Jesus, who died and made you king dick," Conner mutters.

And... that's just it, isn't it? The one thing, the absolutely only thing, that will make Tim realize he's not lying.

"Dick," Conner says, snapping his fingers.

"Excuse me?"

"No, not -" Conner rolls his eyes. "Your name is Tim Drake, Red Robin. You figured out who Batman and Robin were and Batman took you on. You were the third Robin, following Dick Grayson, who joined when his parents were murdered, and Jason Todd, who was killed by the Joker but ended up coming back. Batman is Bruce Wayne, and your adoptive father too. Uh-" Conner pauses, trying to remember every single thing Tim told him about the family. "Alfred Pennyworth, Agent A, whatever, he's your guys' butler, he's the actual coolest guy I know and he puts up with way too much of your crap. And Damian! He's Bruce's son and he's a literal demon, you can't stand him. He's Robin now. Um. That's. That's it. Yeah."

Tim is standing there, shoulders tense. He doesn't speak for a minute after Conner lets his speech fade out.

"Uh. Tim?"

Tim blinks and seems to almost rouse himself. Conner isn't really fazed by it anymore - Tim falls into his head a lot and Conner's been the one to pull him out on many occasions. It always looks a little like this, like Tim's just taking a brief vacation from the real world into whatever weird hellscape his mind (probably) is.

"I'm... thinking," Tim says. And since Conner is his best friend, even if Tim doesn't remember, he shuts up and gives him a minute. Tim always did his best thinking in the silence anyway.

A few moments later Tim glances up at him. He looks less tense now, but there's a tightness around his eyes that Conner recognizes more as wariness than outright distrust.

"I would like to know how you know all that," he says, and Conner recognizes it as what he's classified as the 'diplomat Tim Wayne' voice - cool and calm, rational. Nonthreatening. Hard to argue with, if he's honest.

But, Conner's getting a little annoyed with having to repeat his same damn point every ten seconds, so. Sue him if he gets a little snippy.

"I _told_ you, man; this is all you," he says, exasperated. "I know shit because you're my best friend and used to actually talk to me and also because I'm a freaking clone of Big Blue himself, who always seem a bit too involved with the Gotham side of things for a Metropolis kid."

"Interesting," Tim says, and Conner's known him long enough to get that he means 'potentially dangerous' rather than 'interesting' - plus, it's kind of insulting to be considered a threat when it's Tim he's talking to. "So then how come your memories and mine don't match up?"

"Dude, just - I swear they're real, I don't know what happened but I swear on my, well, existence that it's all legit."

Tim raises an eyebrow. "You could just have implanted memories. False ones."

"They're not like that. Trust me - I have experience with it. They aren't fake, I know that.” Conner lets out a sigh. “And how would that explain how I know everyone’s secret IDs?”

Tim considers him, and Conner just wants him to flip up the lenses on his mask because for the first time in a while he can't actually _read_  him. Like, even when Tim had that stupid cowl on Conner still knew what he was thinking (or at least part of it).

"There's another possibility," Tim offers. "We've met a lot of people from other Earths who've been displaced in time and space and landed here. That might be the same in your case."

He steps over to the monitor and pulls up another screen with glowing dots on it.

"Temporal anomalies," he explains, pointing to a few red dots. One of them is blinking somewhere up north, just at the tip of the Canadian border to the Arctic Ocean. The rest are sporadically placed on the map, some overseas, but a majority are concentrated in the United States instead of internationally. Conner assumes that there's some sort of statistical significance to that, and kind of wants to ask Tim to explain, but he's more interested in the blinking red dot at the moment. He leans forward and jabs a finger at it.

"I think this might be me," he says. He doesn't have a super great reason why outside of pure instinct and gut feelings, but he just knows that that's where he landed.

Tim takes a step forward to study the map again, zooming in on the location itself and writing down a few unintelligible notes on his holocomp. Conner doesn't even try to read them - they're in some weird code that he assumes is Bat in origin and it will just give him a headache trying to figure it out.

"Hmm," Tim says, noncommittal. He looks at the dot again before panning out to the larger map, focusing in on the details for other dots. After a minute or so in which Conner taps his thumb on his jeans, twiddles his fingers, and paces the length of the computer room about 27 times, Tim makes the noise again.

"I think you might be right," Tim concedes.

"Wait, really? Hold up, wait -" Conner pulls out his phone. "Can you say that again, I gotta save it and show it to real-Tim and Bart and Cass, they're gonna die laughing."

" _Conner_ ," Tim says, obviously exasperated. "More important things."

Conner nods hastily. "Right, right, you're the boss, let's get this figured out."

He's still totally going to tell Tim and Bart and Cassie - doesn't even care if they believe him.

"This anomaly is recent, happened a few hours ago. What do you remember?"

Conner shrugs. "Honestly, not much. Went to bed last night, ate too much of Ma's apple pie, and woke up in a forest in, apparently, Canada."

“Ma?” Tim asks.

“Uh - yeah, Mrs. Kent, Clark - Superman’s mom. I’ve kind of been living there for the last couple years, ever since I left Cadmus.” He doesn’t think about how she’s not here. Instead, he stares at the blinking dot that, for some reason or other, is probably the answer to why he’s stuck in this alternate dimension where no one likes him and his best friend has forgotten him. Or, well, the not-evil version of him, or something.

God, he hates alternate universe shit.

"I wonder how the time passed," Tim mused. "What's the chronal difference between your time and ours? Were you stuck in some form of hypersleep? Maybe it was a wormhole of sorts that you stepped through, and that's how you didn't know you could get here."

Conner really misses the old days, where Bart would just be chattering away at superspeed in his ear and rattling off definitions to the things Tim was talking about so that it made more sense to Conner.

It isn't like Conner was stupid, completely the opposite, it was just. When Tim got going he kind of forgot that everyone around him wasn't Bruce or Dick or another one of the Bats or whatever and didn't always understand what he was talking about.

"I got no idea, dude," Conner says, running a hand through his hair. "I just woke up in these back woods and had no clue where I was. Thought I slept-flew or something."

"You fly in your sleep? Like sleepwalking?" Tim asks, eyes lighting up. Conner recognizes the whole 'potential mad scientist' look considering he's been on the receiving end of it since he was basically 16.

"Not really the point, dude," Conner says. Tim nods briskly, and he's got that look in his eyes that lets Conner know he isn't exactly off the hook for that conversation but that Tim is willing to at least table it for now. Thank god.

"We know that there are alternate universes, but it’s been some time since we’ve actually had exposure to another dimension. I wonder what could have caused you to come through at this exact moment,” Tim

muses, chewing on his lip as he thinks.

“I have literally no clue, I’m just glad you stopped trying to kill me,” Conner says.

Tim tenses up a little bit, fingers gripping the edge of the table just a little too tightly. Conner can hear his heart skip a bit as Tim turns to face him.

“We don’t - we don’t kill.”

The golden rule. “Yeah, dude, I know, it was just an exaggeration.”

The air between them is stiff, now, uncomfortable. Conner reaches up to scratch the back of his neck while Tim just stares at him intensely. It’s more than a little weird, and Conner coughs into his hand to try and get Tim to just snap out of it and get back to figuring out what the hell is going on.

“Uh, anyway, I’m definitely not an evil clone... something this good can only be an original piece, yeah?” And just like that, the tense mood breaks as Tim shakes his head, rolling his eyes.

“Aren’t you still a clone, though?” he asks, smirking a little bit.

Conner folds his arms. “Just because I got the best parts of Superman’s DNA doesn’t mean I’m a rip off of him.”

Tim sighs and rubs at his temples. "Okay, since we allegedly were best friends in... whatever dimension you came from? I'm sure that this won't be a surprise to you."

He grabs a petri dish and a syringe, handing them over to Conner. "I need a piece of hair and also a blood sample."

"You could at least buy me dinner first," he jokes. Tim's eyes narrow. Funny - the original Tim had basically the same reaction when Conner dropped that line. "Got it, uh... let me just grab that for you. Although, impenetrable skin? Needle? Pretty one-sided battle there."

Tim rolls his eyes and starts poking through his utility belt, checking the different compartments. Conner isn't sure if Tim is actually looking for something or going through the motions for Conner's sake regardless of the fact that he knows exactly where it is. It bothers him that he can't exactly figure it out.

Tim makes a small sound of discovery and pulls out a small black box. He holds it up to Conner and Conner takes a quick glance at it, brow creasing in confusion.

"A lead box? Why..." he starts, trailing off and wincing as it all clicks together. "This isn't going to be fun for me, is it?"

"Probably not, no," Tim agrees. "But I need to get your blood somehow and I left my Kryptonite needles back at the cave."

He's... probably joking. Probably. Either way, Conner doesn’t want to know.

Conner sits down in a nearby chair and steels himself as Tim takes a step forward. He pulls out a piece of hair when Tim holds the petri dish forward, dropping into the plastic case. Tim nods, stowing it away in one of his compartments, and puts the little lead box down on the table.

"Ready?" Tim asks, and Conner nods, gritting his teeth together.

"Just. Go fast," he says. Tim nods again and reaches for the lid, flipping it back and exposing the glowing green rock nestled inside.

Conner immediately feels it, holding back a groan. Kryptonite is _terrible_ , no one told him that it was that powerful before he'd broken out of his test tube in Cadmus, and he honestly would have appreciated the heads up before Robin punched him in the face with it. His stomach starts to rebel and his arms feel heavier and heavier - if he'd been standing his legs would have given out.

Tim's needle pricks his arm and Conner resists the automatic reflex to flinch, knowing it will hurt more if he moves.

"Sorry," Tim murmurs, and if he could Conner would wave away the apology but his arms don't seem to be working properly at the time.

There's no easy way to describe being under the influence of kryptonite. It's like being sick and drunk and in physical pain all at once. Conner feels like all of his strength is gone and like he can't even move, and that coupled with the constant and aggressive nausea makes for a poor combo. Sweat is starting to coalesce on his brow and Conner lets out a shuddering breath.

Tim snaps the lid shut on the case and Conner slumps over. The strength is already returning to his body but the nausea is going to stay for a while. He really regrets not eating beforehand, because there's no way he's going to be eating anything soon with the way his stomach feels. Not like he would even want to, but still.

(Last time he ate one of Ma's pies after some kryptonite exposure he spent about three hours in the bathroom. It wasn't pretty.)

He looks up and watches Tim stow the petri dish in one of his many compartments on his belt.

"Gonna send that to Batman?" Conner asks. Tim shoots him a weird look.

"No, I have a lab here that can do it just fine," he says, looking a little bit offended, which is weird but. Whatever.

"Sorry, man, normally real-Tim just uses the Batcave for analysis."

"I am real-Tim," not-real-Tim says, gritting his teeth. His voice is short and the syllables are clipped. A muscle in his jaw tightens as he turns away from Conner.

He motions to Conner. “Follow me.”

Conner obediently trudges behind him as they pass through the comm center into a room that looks at least a little bit similar to the lab that Robin used to work out of back when they lived in Titans Tower. The tech has all got a definite upgrade - Conner already knows that he probably couldn’t work half of the stuff in here, but that doesn’t make it less interesting to look at.

Back at the Tower, if Tim could get Bart to focus for long enough, the two of them would cook up some crazy shit in the lab anytime they were stalled on a case. Conner would sit in the corner and watch, laughing whenever Bart moved too fast for Tim to track and knocked a few things over before immediately rescuing them again. Sometimes Cassie would come in and chill with them, gossiping about the drama happening over at Titans East and how Cissie and Traya were doing at school.

Before the Crisis, before... everything. Life was easier. Less worry. Less stress.

Conner’s knocked out of his thoughts by Tim tapping a pen on the side of a cabinet. “Focus, Superboy - you did say that was your name, right?” Tim asks, sliding the petri dish under a microsope. He grabs a laptop from a nearby desk, flips it open, and begins typing.

“Uh - Conner, actually. Kon-El, Superboy, and Conner Kent are what I go by normally.”

Tim pauses. “Here, kon-el means abomination in kryptonian. Is that the same where you’re from?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t really have a meaning. Clark gave me that name a few months into my gig as Superboy, needed a name other than ‘the Kid’, y’know?” Conner laughs a little bit. “Although if it did mean abomination, or whatever the fuck, Clark is really going to have something to answer to.”

“Right.” Tim clicks a few more buttons and starts typing again. “Can you go over this one more time for me? Who cloned you, what’s your DNA, etc...”

"I was cloned by Lex Luthor. Gave me some of his DNA to stabilize the Kryptonian genes. So I have some of Superman's powers and some he doesn't have."

Tim raises his eyebrow, a gesture for Conner to continue.

"The super strength, the heat vision, that's all him, but I've got this sort of - tactile telekinesis too." He closes his eyes and focuses on the chair in front of him. Laying a finger on it, he lets his TTK flow, chair rising a foot or so off the ground. “It’s how I shield myself.”

Tim makes a slightly surprised noise. "Interesting," he mutters, fingers flying across the laptop he has in front of him. "So you aren’t completely invulnerable, you have to create a force field around yourself?”

“Yeah, but as long as I’m in contact with something I can make it do whatever I want. Sometimes if I’m not touching it, too.”

Tim hums. “That’s not a power Superman has.”

Conner nods. “Yeah, I know. Not really sure what I’m doing with it, but it really makes up for the couple of months and years I had to go without being able to have heat vision or arctic breath, so. TTK.”

Tim doesn’t do anything more than nod this time, and Conner’s relatively sure that he hasn’t really been listening to closely to what he’s been saying anyway. He lets Tim work in silence, keys clacking on the laptop. It’s familiar - back in Young Justice, the ‘rents (or, well, psuedo ‘rents) would make them have homework nights, and Tim, Conner, and Bart would stay up all night long cracking away at whatever dumb assignments they’d had. Conner could usually convince Bart to do his math homework, even if Bart’s handwriting looked like barely legible chicken scratch.

The laptop makes a little ding noise and Tim flips a switch on the left side of the microscope. Conner sits on the counter behind him, idly swinging his legs while Tim looks through the lens.

"Your DNA doesn't match our dimension's version of Superboy," Tim says. "Although that's to be expected - you mentioned that Luthor was your human donor? That checks out, his DNA and Superman's are both in there."

Conner nods. “Yeah, when Westfield cloned me he needed human DNA to stabilize my cell structure. For a long time, I thought he’d used his own DNA but turns out Luthor had butted into the project and they’d used his DNA instead. Found out that it was his DNA for the first time when he basically overpowered my brain and forced - well, let’s just say it wasn’t a great way to find out.”

Tim nods, and Conner can tell that he’s barely paying attention as his fingers fly across the keyboard. “Well, that’s all the analysis we can do for now. I don’t really think you’re a threat, and you know too much about all of us to be some super villain disguised as Superboy, so.

“I guess the next step is introducing you to the team, especially if you’re going to be staying here?” Tim says, shooting a questioning look over at Conner.

“I’d appreciate it, man, I don’t really have anywhere else to stay.”

Tim nods. “We have a guest room you can stay in, everyone is out doing other things right now but I’ll call everyone in tomorrow morning and we can start with the introductions.”

Conner’s excited - he knows that so far he’s zero for three with the whole ‘people remembering him’ jam, but maybe Cassie or Bart or whoever else is on the team will remember him. He can hope, at least.

Tim pushes back from the desk, leaving the laptop open as it runs some complicated algorithm. He beckons for Conner to follow him and Conner hops off the shelf, giving one last look behind him to his DNA, displayed on the screen of the laptop,

“Can I ask one thing though?” Conner doesn’t wait for Tim’s nod before going ahead. “Why a boat? Like beyond how absolutely pretentious this is, what happened to the Tower?”

“Long story, but Danny the street died and it got a lot harder to get there, so we ended up moving onto this boat instead.” Tim says, looking forlorn. “Plus, there were a couple explosions and general instances of near-death - it wasn’t safe there anymore.”

Conner doesn’t - doesn’t know where to start. So he just shuts up and nods. “Right. Yeah. Danny the street. Sure, makes sense. And now everyone just. Lives on a yacht. Yup.”

Tim shoots him an unimpressed glare - too bad that move stopped working on him about three years ago. Instead of responding, he pushes open a nearby door.

“You can stay in here,” he says, stepping back to let Conner enter. “I’ll let everyone know to be here before breakfast tomorrow. You can meet everyone then and we can decide what to do about... this.”

Conner mumbles a thanks and heads over to the bed, collapsing on his back as all the stress and panic from the day starts to finally push its way back to the forefront of his mind.

He barely registers Tim’s quiet, “Let me know if you need anything,” before the door slides shut.

Conner closes his eyes for a moment, throwing a hand over his face to try and block out the moonlight coming from the open window. This entire day hasn’t even felt real. Maybe it’s not. Maybe Conner will wake up to the smell of bacon before he has to run off to school and deal with the most boring, inane topics he’s ever heard in his life.

Maybe he can call Bart and convince him to skive off his own classes and come hang with Conner for a bit.

Sighing, Conner rolls over and faces the wall. God, he hopes it’s a dream.

Please, let it be a dream.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sweats
> 
> so i’m still not done but i feel bad so. take chapter 2? no idea when we’ll get anything else. sorry

When Conner wakes up the next morning, he’s 90 percent convinced that everything was a dream and that he’s still laying in bed at the farmhouse, Ma cooking up breakfast for him after he’s done milking the cows and grabbing the eggs. 

But he doesn’t smell any manure in the air, no fresh grass wafting in through his open window, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach he opens his eyes. 

The walls of the room are slate gray; definitely not his room at Smallville, covered with posters of Wendy and Wonder Woman and rock bands. And that means....  _ fuck _ . 

Not a dream, then. 

He’s stuck in some reality that he doesn’t recognize, with a version of his best friend that he wants to punch, and Clark hates him again and Ma doesn’t even  _ exist _ in this universe, and he doesn’t know how to get home, and - 

Like, he knows he’s 18 and all and needs to be more mature or whatever Clark says when he comes over and sees Conner skipping school again, but all he wants is to be back in Smallville where Ma is and where he can hug her and get some of her bacon. Not trapped for who knows how long in this universe. 

Because he is trapped, right? He has no idea how he’s going to get home, absolutely no clue whatsoever if home even exists beyond a nebulous concept even more. Maybe Tim can figure something out, or Bruce even, but for now Conner is just stuck. 

Hell, he doesn’t know how he got here, and he thinks that that particular fact would be an important aspect of actually getting a way home.

And what does he do if he... can’t get home?

_ Can’t think about that _ , Conner decides, swinging his legs around the side of the bed as he stands up and stretches out his back. There are some clothes in the dresser across from him, generic superhero t-shirts and sweats that look like they’ll fit him; his jeans and shirt from yesterday are pretty crusty already, so he throws on the new clothes and just leaves his old ones on the bed. 

He goes to the door of the room and pauses with his hand on the doorknob, because where the hell is he going to go? It’s early enough that he doesn’t think anyone else has shown up yet, so he won’t be meeting any of them in the hallway, but he also doesn’t really... he doesn’t want to get lost. The ship (and he’s still weirded out by that, a little bit) is huge, and he doesn’t know his way around at all. 

Resigned, he closes his eyes and lets himself listen for Tim’s heartbeat again, and decides to follow that until he finds Tim. Hopefully he’s awake, in the kitchen or the lounge or something, because Conner’s stomach is rumbling. 

Guess that comes with inter-dimensional travel.

Luck must be on his side, at least in this particular moment, because Tim’s standing in a room right off of the kitchen, fumbling around with some bread and jam. 

“Hey,” Conner says, knocking on the door. “Morning.”

”Oh, hey,” Tim says, giving him a nod. “How are, uh... how are you feeling? Any latent interdimensional sickness or anything?” 

Conner shrugs. “Does being starving count?” he asks, pulling out a chair and sinking into it, resting his forearms on the table. 

“Well, you didn’t eat yesterday, so I think that might just be you.” Tim holds out a slice, slathered in a bright purple jelly. “Want some? Miguel’s mom sent it up with him when he came back from a visit. Plus. it shouldn’t mess with your stomach, just in case you do start feeling nauseous.” 

Conner thanks him and takes the slice of bread, absolutely ravenous. It takes all of his restraint to not shove it in his mouth and swallow - somewhere in the back of his head he hears Ma’s voice, telling him to behave. 

“Does interdimensional sickness usually become a problem?” Conner asks, and he’s only half joking. Tim cracks a smile, shrugging his shoulders.

“You’d have to ask another dimension hopper. Or a time traveler. Maybe Booster Gold will give you some tips if you have to jump between time and space in the future.”

Conner laughs, reaching around Tim to grab another piece of bread and spreading some jelly on it. Whatever flavor the jelly is - it’s not grape, and Conner doesn’t really know any other purple fruits - is absolutely delicious and he’s gonna have to thank Miguel’s (whoever the hell that is, actually) mom. Ma’s is still better, though.

A lump forms in his throat that Conner swallows around. It’s fine. He’s going to get back to Ma and his friends and his family and it’s gonna be okay. This Tim will figure something out. He always does. 

“So, who’s Miguel?” Conner asks, swallowing the last of the bread and licking off his fingers. 

“He must not have existed in your universe. He’s on the team. You’ll meet him today.”

“Oh,” Conner says. “Uh, cool. So, like, is there anyone else even here right now?”

”No, just us,” Tim says, before launching into a long-winded explanation of where everyone else is.

According to Tim, Cassie and Miguel normally stay on the ship instead of staying with their parents. Cassie apparently doesn’t have the best relationship with her mom (or anyone else, really), which is a bit of a shock considering that his Cassie challenged basically the entire US military in order to protect her mom and other people she loved. Another thing to add to the list of what’s weird, he guesses. On the other hand, Miguel’s family just lives far away. He still visits from time to time, though. 

Regardless, no one else is in the tower at least for now, which might be a huge coincidence or it might be the reason Conner was brought back now; whatever it is, he knows that it hurts to think about. 

From what he gathers, they’re still the Teen Titans, but the job seems to be a lot more, uh... full-time than Conner remembers. His team would assemble on the weekends, but they had lives outside of the team, too. School, and homework, and friends, and clubs... which doesn’t seem to be the case, here. Apparently Tim just lives here, which is weird because Conner knows that Tim lived in his apartment in Gotham during the week.

Bart lives here too, with his kinda-sorta girlfriend? Which is weird for a number of different reasons, but mainly in that Bart  _ loved _ staying with Jay and Joan, even if they weren’t Max. He doesn’t know why Bart would choose to live here instead of with them.

The other two - Kiran and Tanya. Kiran and stays here, and Conner briefly remembers Kiran from a mission, but they haven’t really talked all that much. She stays here with Bart because she doesn’t really have a home, and also they’re apparently dating, at least that’s what Tim says. Tanya seems to be the only one who stays with her family during the week and helps out on the weekends. 

And now, Conner gets to meet all of them. Well, meet them again. This dimension’s version of them. 

"Hey, uh-" Tim starts, looking a little awkward. "Don't be offended if some of them are a little... tense? This is kinda new for them. And... it's been a weird couple weeks, mostly revolving around you - or, well, this dimension's version of you, I guess."

"Cryptic..." Conner says, rolling his eyes. "Don't suppose I'll be getting an explanation on that anytime soon?"

Tim's eyes glint and the corner of his mouth tilts up. "Maybe if you behave yourself."

Conner laughs. He knew that his Tim was in there somewhere. 

 

—

 

Meeting the team is... weirder than Conner was expecting, even with Tim's warning. Because he recognizes most of them, even if there are a few new faces, but the ones he recognizes are... they aren't what he totally remembers. Kinda like mirror images of the people he considers his friends. 

Which is freaky. 

Cassie is the first one into the room, because of course, and there's just something a little off about her. She's a lot harder, looks a lot less positive and lot more angry at the world. Her arms are tightly folded and she moves to Tim's side without breaking eye contact with Conner - almost like she's waiting for him to lunge forward and attack.

"Tim, what the hell is this," she hisses. "How do you know it isn't Match?"

Match. Right. Tim and Cassie had both told him about the time Match came to play at the Tower and tried to kill them during Conner's little... vacation. It makes sense for them to be worried that he's him, especially considering the guy's epic level of douche and, you know, the whole lack of giving a shit about human lives thing he's got going on. Guess some things just stay the same across universes.

"I tested his DNA. Match's is a little different.   Not much, but it's not showing up as a positive, uh... match," Tim says, and Conner would swear on whatever higher being there was that Tim's lip twitched as he said it. 

The data on the computer shows a strand of what Conner thinks is his DNA (and really? Subject One? He couldn't get a cool label, like Dimensional Traveler, or - or - something?) next to one labeled MATCH. Cassie leans over to look at it and Conner follows suit, wanting to get a good look at the codons that separate his DNA from Match's. Cassie shoots him a glare when he gets close; he holds his hands up non-threateningly and backs off, shoving his hands in his pockets while Cassie turns back to the screen.

"Okay, so it isn't Match," she says, frowning. "Who is it?"

Conner coughs, loudly. " _ It _ is right here, in case you were confused."

Cassie gives him a hostile glare. " _ It _ should shut up before  _ it _ gets hurt."

Well, that was new.

"Tim was right, you do look just like Superboy." One of the guys Conner completely doesn't recognize steps in after her, looking him up and down.  He gives him a smirk, throwing him a thumbs up. "Don't try to kill us this time."

Echoes of Luthor's voice play out through his head, followed by his friends screams as Conner breaks Tim's arm and chokes Cassie against a tree. Apparently it happened again, here, in this dimension, and there were two Conner's who lost to Luthor. Conner only just refrains from flinching and gives mysterious stranger #1 a weak grin.

"Yeah, I'll, uh - I'll try to restrain myself."

"I'm Miguel," he says. "Me and the other Superboy were best friends."

Conner only just refrains from cutting a quick glance over at Tim.

The girl who came in with Miguel has stars for skin and Conner vaguely recognizes her as Solstice, who was an active member of the Teen Titans last he checked, but she doesn't seem to remember him and greets him with a shy, "Hello," that Conner just sort of nods to in response. 

He hears the lightning crackling and his ears perk up, because that could only be a speedster and everything else in this dimension might be bass-ackwards but maybe Bart will come through like he always does. 

There's a blur as something yellow and red speeds into the room, dropping the vibrational frequencies down just enough for Conner to get a good look at him and it's - it's not Bart. Not totally, at least. 

The speedster kid who kinda sorta resembles his Bart is... vibrating at him, and acting way more cocky than Bart ever would. 

"Who the hell is this?" he says, crossing his arms and looking over at not-Tim. Not-Tim shrugs and gestures helplessly at Conner, who feels even more on edge than he did before.

"Who the hell are you?" Conner says, glaring.

"Bart Allen, Kid Flash, speedster extraordinaire, all-around great dude, fastest teenager ever... you pick, big guy."

"You're not Bart," Conner says.

"Actually, we aren't sure," Cassie chimes in, shooting him a glare. "So for all intents and purposes, he is."

Conner is more than a  little confused. "Uh... what?"

"Long story, I'll explain later," Tim says, sighing a little bit. ”Cassie, do you know where Tanya is? She didn’t respond to my message yesterday.” 

Cassie shrugs. “I’m not her keeper.” 

“Sorry, sorry, I know I’m late!” Conner hears, and turns toward the door as yet another unfamiliar face ducks through, looking out of breath. She stops a little ways away from him, rubbing the back of her hand against her forehead. 

“Hey, I’m Power Girl. But you can call me Tanya,” she says, sticking out a hand (thankfully, not the one she just wiped away her sweat with) and smiling up at Conner.

“Conner,” he responds, shaking her hand and giving her a smile in return. “We didn’t have you in my dimension.” 

“One and only, baby,” Tanya says, giving him a playful wink. Conner laughs. He likes Tanya. Tanya seems cool.  

“So, what are you doing here? New teammate?” 

Conner starts to respond, but Tim cuts him off with a short, “No,” before he can say anything.

“Uh, dude?” he says, raising an eyebrow at Tim. 

“Conner’s here from another dimension. We don’t know how long he’ll be here for, but he won’t be joining the team.” Tim explains. An awkward silence falls over the group; Cassie folds her arms and glances between them both, looking relatively unimpressed, while everyone else just averts their eyes. 

“Kinda thought I’d be fighting with the team.”

Tim shrugs. “Fine. Beat me in hand-to-hand and you can join.”

“Fine. Bring it,” Conner challenges, because fuck that if he’s just going to be, what, sitting around while everyone else throws themselves into danger? Not a chance. He’s only been in this dimension for a day, but he’s never really been one to step back from a fight regardless of the situation, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let Tim bench him without a damn good reason first. 

Tim rides fluidly from the sofa and eyes him critically. The rest of the team look between the two of them when Tim steps forward. “Shake on it. If you can’t beat me in a fight, then no missions.” 

Conner reaches out and grabs his hand, only squeezing it a little bit harder than he normally would. To his credit, Tim doesn’t even wince. “And if I do win, you let me go with you guys.”

“Deal.” Tim drops his hand after a quick shake, stepping back and folding his arms. “Well? Let’s go.” 

Bart cheers from the couch as Tim heads out, clapping excitedly. “Oh, dude, you’re gonna get your ass handed to you! Have a great time.” 

Kiran shoves at Bart’s shoulder, and Tanya just rolls her eyes. She does give him a bit of a sympathetic look, throwing him a thumbs up behind Tim’s back. Miguel hops up and wraps an arm around Conner’s neck, patting him on the chest.

“Make sure to watch out, Red’s tricky. If what you told us is true, you might just stand a chance,” Miguel says.

Cool.

Still, it’s better than Cassie’s death glare that she’s training on him. Conner sighs and follows Tim out of the door. 

 

—

 

"Wait, wait, wait," Conner says, pulling on Tim's arm. "What's up with not-Bart? You said you'd explain later. It’s later."

Tim just stares at Conner's hand, frowning slightly. "Uh." He shrugs his shoulders a little bit and Conner lets go. "He's a time-traveling criminal from the future. Came back to the past to escape the cops, then went back and to prison, and now he's back in our time. Not totally sure how, he isn't big on the explanations."

"Sounds like my - wait, did you say  _ criminal _ ?"

Tim nods, continuing to walk toward the main room. 

"You can't just - dude!" Conner flies after him, cursing. He grabs Tim by the arm again and feels his TTK flow through his hand, locking Tim in place. "What do you mean, not-Bart's a criminal?"

Tim glares at him. "Let go of me."

"Not until you tell me what's going on with him. And I know you know more than you're letting on, okay?"

Tim closes his eyes for a few seconds, breathing out loudly. "Okay. Okay, fine. I'll explain, but I swear to God if you don't let me go -"

Conner drops him. Tim stumbles back a bit and rubs at the bridge of his nose. 

"Bart lost his family to an extreme government group and joined the rebellion against them when he was younger. He fought for them and led some... frankly massive missions against the agency. A lot of people died, including his sister. It was - He was placed in witness protection in this time, and because of his super speed was given an alias that linked him with the Flash of our time."

Conner blinks. "Not-Bart's a murderer? Not even - he’s a genocidal murderer?? How - Why is he even on this  _ team _ ? No killing, that's the rule!"

"He was on before we knew," Tim finally turns away, heading off toward the main room. Conner stays where he is for a second, just processing. It's... difficult to imagine the Bart he knows killing anyone. He's never even come close before, not even when Deathstroke almost permanently put him out of commission, or when Max disappeared on him. It's - it can't be him. It just can't. His Bart wouldn't -  _ couldn't _ \- do anything like this.

"Where the hell am I?" he mutters, before running after Tim. "Wait, what did Cassie mean about his name?"

Tim doesn't turn back this time. "His real name is Bar Torr, apparently. We call him Bart still because it's easier."

Conner nods. "Right," he says slowly. "Sure."

Bart, a genocidal maniac? He can’t - it’s impossible. They’re talking about the kid who went into shock and depression when his mentor almost died, when one of his scouts was killed in front of him. The kid who put everyone else first. Conner genuinely can’t even connect the two. 

"Wait, so what about me? All you said was that I had different DNA than the Kon El from this... dimension, or whatever, but you didn't really give me an explanation."

"You were cloned by N.O.W.H.E.R.E. by a man called Harvest, that's really all I have about your origin," Tim says. "We know Harvest modeled you after Superman for some reason and that you were intended to replace him." 

"Wow, that's - that's different," Conner says, slowly. "On my earth I was cloned by Cadmus Labs, using a mix of Lex Luthor's and Superman's DNA, and it was after Superman died." 

Tim stares at him. "Superman  _ died _ on your earth?"

"Temporarily," Conner says. "He came back and I got kicked to Hawaii. It was a whole mess, a lot of misunderstandings were had, we're cool now. Kinda."

Tim looks a little shaken, actually, which is probably the most emotion (other than the annoyance thing) Conner has seen from him since he got there.

"I can't imagine Superman dying," he mutters, shaking his head slightly. "What happened?"

Conner frowned. "Doomsday killed him, a bunch of new Superpeople were created, including me, and then Superman came back and kicked their asses to kingdom come."

"Thanks for the Cliff-Notes version," Tim said, drily. 

Conner just shrugged. He wasn't really paying attention to much back then outside of babes and surfing and making as much money as possible with Rex and Roxy and Dubbilex. God, what he wouldn’t give to go back to that again. 

“Hey.” He looks up just in time to catch the staff that comes spinning through the air at him. On the opposite side of the room, Tim stands with his arms folded. 

Now that he’s not thinking about genocidal Bart and what else could be different about this hell universe, he realizes that they’re in some sort of training room. Staves, knives, bows, and all sorts of other weapons line the walls, surrounding a matted room with the Teen Titans insignia painted in the middle. 

“Oh, very nice,” he says, bending down to brush at it. 

“If you really want to be on the team,” Tim says, “then we need to figure out where you’re at.” 

“Is that a challenge?” he asks, smirking over at Tim, who returns it easily. 

“Think of it more like a placement test.”

Conner cracks his knuckles and tosses aside the staff. “Trust me, you’d rather I didn’t use a weapon to fight.”

This, he can do. Sparring, focusing on strategy, on tactics, ignoring all the other weird stuff that’s going on in his life right now - that’s easy. Him and all the other Teen Titans - sparring was what you did when you didn’t want to think. For a solid week after everything with his father and Stephanie... Tim challenged almost everyone on the team. Conner got his ass handed to him on at least six different occasions that week. It’s a coping method, and its way healthier than going after some bad guys on your own to try and vent the anger. 

“Mind if I change real quick?” he asks, spotting a pair of sweats on the bench nearby. Tim responds with a quick nod, messing with his own costume. He’s been mocked enough for the boring jeans+t-shirt combo that he uses for a costume instead of anything else, but he’s not going to pretend that it’s the most comfortable to fight in. Sparring is way more hands-on than most fights he’s in, the jeans just don’t work. 

Quickly, he trades the jeans for sweatpants and leaves the S-shield t-shirt on, shifting his bare feet against the mat below him to get ready to fight. 

He grins over at where Tim stands on the other side of the sparring mat. He's finally shed his weird-ass metal wing... thing (and thank God for that) and most of his costume, standing there in a red tank (gotta keep that branding going. Conner can respect that) with dark leggings on. He still has the bō staff, which doesn’t surprise Conner at all. Tim's always been partial to it above any other weapons the Bats use. Dick uses the escrima sticks, Jason has his guns, Cass is just absolutely lethal with her fists, Damian has a thing for swords, and, as Conner heard from Tim, Steph seems to have an unprecedented familiarity with bricks. 

“I’m not going to go easy on you,” Tim warns, getting into his own stance. 

Conner snorts. “I’d be offended if you did.”

Tim’s eyes narrow slightly, like he’s evaluating Conner, and feints, before lunging at him, lightning-quick.

Conner sees the kick coming and adjusts accordingly, beefing up his TTK field so that it deflects. The kick glances off his arm and Tim is already coming back, sending a series of punches at Conner’s sternum while dodging or blocking Conner’s own hits. 

Damn, Tim is  _ fast _ . Even back in his own dimension Tim had been quicker than most, and it might be a testament to how long it's been since they actually sparred since Conner completely forgot about it. 

Tim’s foot whistles by his ear and Conner swears under his breath. He needs to pay attention. 

He grabs Tim’s foot before it can retract and pulls him closer, trying to get a grip on his arm to flip Tim around. Tim goes dead weight in his grip, pulling Conner down to the mats with him and breaking his foot free in the same motion. He shifts away and readies himself for another attack while Conner gets back to his feet. 

Before Tim can move, Conner rushes him, making a move to deflect the incoming blow from the bō staff and get Tim in a headlock. He knocks the bō staff away but misses the grip, and Tim gets in a fast kick to his side before dodging away. 

There’s a beat where both of them stare at each other and start circling the mat opposite each other. Conner is sweating heavily, he can feel it. 

Tim’s gaze flicks to the side for just an instant; Conner rushes him and is able to connect, careful with his strength even as he punches his hand into Tim’s chest. Tim stumbles back, gasping a little bit, and Conner presses the advantage, grabbing Tim in a headlock. He pushes Tim to the mat and revels in his victory for all of two seconds before Tim’s foot comes flying up in some weird contortion and clocks him in the side of the head. He lets go instinctively but is able to shove Tim away as another punch comes flying at him. 

“Hmm,” Tim says, standing back and breathing hard. “Why don’t we make this more even?” He tosses the bō staff aside and pulls out a switch from a table just off the mats. “Red kryptonite won’t weaken you like green kryptonite, but it’ll reduce your powers. Are you okay with that?” 

Conner considers it for a second, and grins. “Just me versus you? No powers, no staff, nothing? Yeah, let’s go.”

Tim grins back, and flips the switch.

Oh.

It’s definitely not like green kryptonite - first of all, Conner doesn’t feel an immediate need to throw up or pass out, so it’s already better on that front. Second, it doesn’t feel like he’s losing his powers. It just feels like they’ve been... locked away, almost. But not in a bad way. It’s weird. He isn’t sure he likes it, but he wants to prove himself to Tim, so he goes with it. 

“Alright. Same rules?”

Tim nods.

Conner shifts his weight and watches Tim size him up, plan out a strategy in his mind. He stretches his arms to the side, making an exaggerated ‘after you’ sign. Tim smirks, and then he’s on Conner in a flash. 

Conner blocks a fist, a foot, twisting away and out of Tim’s range. He lunges back, striking at Tim’s solar plexus with his elbow even as Tim ducks away, flexible as ever. Overbalancing, Conner lets himself drop when Tim tries to retaliate, kick swinging inches above his head. 

He springs back up and gets Tim’s arm locked behind his back, only to gasp when Tim uses his own strength against him, flipping Conner onto his back on the mat. Tim’s heel crashes down into the mat, right where his abdomen had been as he rolls away. His hands wrap around Tim’s knee as he pushes up, sending Tim down to the mat. 

Tim’s wriggly like a fucking eel, though, and Conner only barely has enough time to jump back when he loses grip on Tim’s leg and eyes the kick coming straight for his face.

They face each other warily on the mat. Conner’s breathing heavily, and his muscles are burning; Tim’s hair is sticking to his forehead. Conner sits back into a fighting stance, waiting for Tim to make the first move. 

His limbs are just so  _ heavy _ , and he doesn’t know if it’s the red kryptonite pulling at them or what, but it means he doesn’t dodge the next time Tim’s kick comes at his chest. He hits the mat on his back and gasps, breath knocked out of him. Tim doesn’t press the advantage, just stands above him with a frown. 

“Are you okay?” he asks finally, when Conner decides that getting up is stupid, and not only because he can barely feel his legs. 

“Yeah,” he groans instead, closing his eyes against the mix of amusement and concern in Tim’s gaze. “Just. I just need a second. To breathe.” 

Footsteps pad softly away from him as Conner tries to regulate his breathing -  _ in through the nose, out through the mouth, wait, shit, is that right? _

“I never get that tired sparring,” Conner says, frowning.

“Maybe you’re out of shape,” Tim comments. Which is kind of how it feels - Conner was definitely a bit more mentally ragged when he’d been out of commission for a while after the whole Prime scenario, but he had never had this much trouble getting his body to cooperate. It might be the kryptonite lamps, sure, but even when he was sparring against Tim at full strength he was barely able to get a move in edgewise. He feels out of practice - which he really shouldn’t be, since he’d literally gone on a rescue mission gone wrong a couple of days ago and had had no issue taking out 75% of the bad guys while the rest of the team focused on getting everyone out. 

He tells Tim as much and Tim just tilts his head. 

“Are you sure?”

Conner opens his mouth to respond because, like, of course he remembers, it was three days ago,  _ Tim _ , but... he woke up somewhere he didn’t recognize, in a universe he didn’t know, so can he actually be sure?

“Could dimension travel affect that? Like... a timeskip?” 

“Potentially.” Tim gives him a small smile, almost looking like his own Tim. “Sure you aren’t just looking for excuses as to why I beat you?”

Conner shoves at his shoulder half-heartedly. “Oh, c’mon, dude. Don’t kick me while I’m down.”

 

—

 

"Hey, so - what did Miguel mean, that whole killing thing?" Conner asks. It's something that's been bugging him ever since he met the team earlier, even more so than thoughts about how… wrong Bart and Cassie are. Even years later, Conner can remember the feeling of Tim's arm cracking under his grip, the sinuous feel of Luthor in his mind, forcing him to hurt his friends, and even though the Luthor of this world had nothing to do with this dimension's Superboy Conner is still worried that he'll be used as a weapon again. 

It's hard to forget hurting your friends like that. Even the self-imposed exile Conner sat through afterward hadn't helped, nothing to distract him from watching his friends all fall. 

"Oh, that? Well, when you first met all of us, you tried to kill us. Or capture us, or uh, mostly Cassie, but whatever. It's old news, Conner," Tim says, engrossed in the computer screen. He sounds dismissive of the entire situation, which Conner supposes is a good sign, but. There's something still niggling at the back of his mind. 

He should leave it alone. There's something about the way Ma and Clark reacted to him that makes Conner think he really doesn't want to know about that dimension's Superboy, but it can't hurt, right? The more he knows, he more he'll understand. Maybe he can become a hero too, take on the cape and the S-shield. 

Before he can change his mind he's tapping Tim on the shoulder. 

"So, uh - can you tell me what happened to this dimension's Superboy? You said he, uh. Died?"

Tim stiffens. He doesn't turn around to face Conner but his voice is devoid of any emotion when he answers. "It's relatively unclear, actually. We - me, Cassie, and Bart - watched you - well, him - fly away to Harvest when he called, despite his best efforts, and then we never heard from him again. We assumed he was killed."

Conner blinks, slowly. "Yeah, only about 40% of that actually made sense to me. Who's Harvest? What do you mean he flew away? Why did you assume he was dead?"

"It's... complicated."

"I'm here from another dimension and you don't remember me even though I'm your best friend. Cassie and Bart both don't trust me even though I've known them for almost my whole life and they're my best friends too. I've been dealing with complicated since I got here."

Tim bites at his cheek but nods, motioning to the chair. "You, uh. Might want to sit down."

That’s reassuring. Conner folds his arms and doesn’t listen, which Tim seems to accept with a slightly exasperated sigh, and leans against the wall. 

“There was, I guess, an incident. We’d been - it’s a really long story, but you were in the news for murdering a bunch of people who turned out to be aliens-“

“I’m sorry, I was  _ what _ ?!” Conner yells, throwing his hands off to the side. “I killed someone? Many someones?”

"Conner, they were aliens," Tim tries.

"That doesn't matter, Tim, you know it doesn't!" Conner shouts. He knows that the rest of the Titans are still in the building, that they've got to be hearing his outburst, but he can't bring himself to care. Because this is just another dimension in which he  _ screwed up _ and hurt people. He doesn't  _ care _ that they weren't innocent, that they weren't human, that it wasn’t actually him, or whatever the fuck. It was still murder, and he knows that Tim is just trying to calm him down because on no Earth would Tim justify murder by saying they were aliens, he just  _ wouldn't _ . 

"Harvest built a backdoor into your mind, Conner," Tim says, and it's not gentle at all and it might honestly be the one thing keeping Conner from absolutely losing it. "You had no control."

"That doesn't - that's not the point, the point is that just when I get away from Luthor and his manipulation there's someone else trying to control me!" Conner yells.

"What do you mean? Luthor was manipulating you?" Tim asks, looking concerned. 

Conner just shakes his head, because even though it's been years since that day, even though he's literally  _ died and come back _ , he still gets trapped in memories of breaking Tim's arm, of choking Cassie until she was almost dead, of watching himself hurt his friends even as he screamed, trapped in his own skin and -

Tim's hands are on his face. He's speaking quietly but quickly and his voice is firm but Conner can tell that he's worried. Conner closes his eyes and focuses on the feel of Tim's hands on his cheeks through the fog, on the soft timbre of Tim's voice as he speaks to him. 

"Conner, you're okay, you're safe, no one's controlling you, follow my breathing," he keeps saying, repeating himself over and over as Conner focuses on his breathing. 

This happened... a lot after the initial incident, ending up with Conner rocking back and forth on his bed as the images pounded through his mind, suffocating him. Usually Ma would come and help him through it, stroking a hand through his hair and counting with him to help regulate his breathing and get him to calm down. 

He starts counting in his head, breathing in and then letting it out slowly. Tim begins tapping on his leg and it takes Conner a moment to realize that he's helping him count, tapping out the rhythm on Conner's leg with him. 

A few cycles later and Conner's breathing regularly again, and he opens his eyes to see Tim staring at him. He looks a little panicked, which Conner understands considering he basically just started hyperventilating in front of him. 

"...Sorry," he says quietly, voice a bit hoarse. "Didn't mean to lose it on you like that."

"You don't have to apologize for panicking," Tim says, still looking a bit freaked himself. His Tim wasn’t the best at emotional confrontation ever, regardless of how close you already were to him. Fuck, Conner had known him for years and the guy still didn’t tell him (or Bart) when his father had died. At least, not initially. 

“When I -“ Conner says, swallowing hard. “Back on my Earth, Lex Luthor, he. Did a similar thing. Took over my mind. Made me. made me hurt people.” He looks away from Tim, shame burning his cheeks as he feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. 

“I should have been able to fight him off, I -“ 

“Conner.” Tim cuts him off, gently but sternly grabbing Conner’s shoulder until Conner turns to face him. “What our Kon El did and what you did on your Earth... it’s not you. It wasn’t you. You didn’t ask for it.”

And, yeah, Conner knows that. He really does. Tim and Cassie and even Clark and Ma had hammered that point home, but no one could take the memories, fuzzy and fragmented that they were, out of his stupid head. He doesn’t remember how he got to the tower, but he remembers how Tim’s arm felt when he snapped it. He still remembers Cassie’s neck under his hands, but he doesn’t remember fighting her or Bart. 

He doesn’t know how to explain it to Tim, either. 

“It’s. It’s fine, Tim, I'm just gonna - gonna go. I’ll deal with it.” He runs a hand down his face and turns to head out the door, ignoring Tim’s worried look on his back. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had more complete than i thought !!

"Hey, Red!" 

Conner turns at the shout, spotting the dude dressed in purple who he met earlier - Miguel - hurrying down the hallway. Tim doesn't even stop walking.

Miguel gives Conner a long-suffering glance as he passes him, grabbing Tim by the shoulder and spinning him around. "What'd you do to Cassie?" he asks, crossing his arms.

"Nothing," Tim says, turning back around. Miguel sighs, loudly, and darts around him to cut him off.

Conner just twiddles his thumbs.

"Really? Because she isn't saying it's nothing, and she's been stomping around for days on end and you've barely been speaking to her."

"I spoke to her today," Tim says. 

"Red, please, she just bit Bart’s head off, so if you could just talk to her?" Miguel beseeches, clasping his hands together and waving them at Tim. "The team suffers when Cassie's mad at you."

Tim just stands there, arms crossed, until Miguel flicks him on the head. He shoots a glance over at Conner while Tim yelps, rubbing at his forehead. 

“Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” he says, throwing his hands up as he walks away. “He needs it, and I need to talk to Gabby.” 

Tim just runs a hand through his hair, glaring despondently at Miguel’s back as he walks away. 

“So why is Cassie pissed at you?” Conner asks, as Miguel’s headed back to his room to Skype with his boyfriend. Tim just shakes his head and rubs at his temples.

“We broke up a few weeks ago and she’s apparently still angry about it. At least, that’s what I’m assuming. I don’t really know.”

Yeah, that - wait. “Wait. You and - and Cassie?” Conner asks, gaping a little bit. 

Sure, his Tim and his Cassie had maybe sort of had a thing for all of half a minute before he had come back in a blaze of glory, but even that had been more borne of mutual grief than any actual attraction. Anyone could see that. 

And this Tim, and this Cassie... they couldn’t be more different from Conner’s Tim and Cassie if you tried. Plus, just - imagining them being together romantically is hilarious. Cassie would eat Tim alive in any universe. 

“Yeah. We were dating for a bit, but it really wasn’t working out.” Tim looks kind of exhausted, actually, and more than a little exasperated. 

“Interesting.” 

“Conner, what - what does that mean?” Tim calls after him as Conner heads off the hallway, little smirk on his face. “Conner!”

Conner ignores him, ducking into a room off the main hallway, where there are a few old weapons next to some blank spaces with a sign saying ‘move to souvenir room’.

“You guys have a souvenir room?” he calls back to Tim, only to find that the teammate in question is right behind him. “Where? How’d you get all this stuff in here instead of keeping it at the Tower?”

Tim gives him a weird look. “I don’t really know what you mean by Tower, we moved all this stuff over from our old penthouse. Nightwing and the other Titans didn’t really have a working HQ so we kept their old momentos here. Follow me.”

Tim taps Conner’s shoulder and heads down a long hallway that he’s pretty sure he hasn’t been down yet. There’s an unassuming steel door down at the end; Tim doesn’t even have to use a keypad to open the door. He pulls it open and steps through, gesturing for Conner to follow him. 

Conner steps through into the hallway with little nods to the previous Titans. Tim is walking in front of him, pointing out relevant stories, and they aren't the same things that Conner remembers but they're similar enough that he just chalks it up to weird dimensional things and moves on. 

He's a little tired.

Anyway, Tim pulls out a photo and hands it to Conner. It's standard Teen Titans fare, a group shot with the founders to be used as a motivational 'look what we did! now think about what you can do' piece for younger kids. Conner actually really likes the picture, because it reminds him about how they all formed Young Justice and had some fun times before everything went to absolute shit. 

But. 

"Hey, where's Wally? All the original Titans are photographed, where's he?" Conner asks. He looks up and down the aisle for anything to do with Wally but the halls are sadly speedster-devoid.

"Wally?" Tim asks, brow pulling together. "Wally who?"

"Wally West?" Conner tries, looking for any sort of recognition in Tim's eyes. "Scarlet speedster? Kid Flash? Took over as Flash when Barry died? Helped form the Titans? Member of the Justice League?"

Tim doesn't say anything, but he kind of looks like he thinks that Conner is going crazy. "I have no idea who you're talking about," he says slowly.

For some reason, Tim can't remember him, either, and that can't be good news for more than a couple reasons. In Conner's experience, a complete wipeout of someone from memory is probably the fault of someone way above his pay grade.  

"Does your Bart know him, at least? Or Barry?"

"No, and uh - they're, ah -" Tim starts, looking somehow more awkward than he normally does. "Not affiliated."

Whatever the hell that means. Sure, Barry and Bart didn’t really get a chance to be close, considering that Barry was dead for most of Bart’s, ah. Formative years? Barry wasn’t in Bart’s life for a long time, but Bart idolized the guy and it was really obvious that Barry loved him too. On the other hand, Conner knows that Bart and Wally were never really close, even after Bart came back from the dead and Wally realized maybe he shouldn't be such a dick to someone willing to sacrifice their life to a cause, but. That's how those things go, anyway. His own death definitely got Nightwing and Batman on his good side, so he can't really complain. 

"That's... weird," he says, hedging a little bit. “What about the other speedsters?” 

“What other speedsters? There’s only the Flash and Bart, here.”

“What?” 

Tim gives him a Look, one that Conner has definitely seen before in his own dimension, and doesn’t need to ask Conner to elaborate. 

“In my dimension, there’s an entire family of speedsters. Like, ten of them.” 

Enough is weird here that he isn't totally surprised to find another thing that's different, but it's a little disturbing realizing just how many relationships have been twisted and changed. He doesn't like it. 

Tim just shrugs, not asking anything else but not offering information up either, and Conner decides to let it rest for now. He can push more on it later if he really wants. 

Walking through the hall, He recognizes some of the souvenirs from battles back on his Earth too. The machine from Mister Twister. A few swords that definitely match one more thing on the checklist of things that didn't totally change. 

It's a... really small list. But everything he finds that reminds him of home, even a little bit, helps loosen the knot that seems to have taken up permanent residence in his stomach.

 

—

 

Time starts to pass quickly after the first few exhausting days are over. Cassie is still giving him the cold shoulder, Miguel is still acting like he’s his best friend back from a long vacation (which, honestly, is kinda nice), and “Bart” is still pissing him off every time he opens his mouth. Kiran is kind enough to him - he remembers her from his Teen Titans days, too, one of the newer members who Bart had a crush on for all of three seconds. Tanya is nice as can be, but she doesn’t spend as much time here as the rest of them so Conner hasn’t talked to her much.

Conner has been there - wherever 'there' actually is - for a couple of weeks before the call comes through, and even though he's been dreading it he's actually a bit surprised that it took this long. 

Maybe Batman has been off-world or something.

It started out like a normal day. Him and Tim were seated in the computer room arguing about when Conner could join the team ("Conner, you're sort of a wanted criminal." A scoff. "So what, I can wear a disguise. No one will know it's me." A pause. "I... don't think glasses and a t-shirt are going to work this time around, strangely enough.") when the computer began blinking red. 

Tim was on his feet in a half second, quicker than Conner, and his hand was pushing at Conner's chest, shoving him into a hidden corner of the room before he really understood what was going on. But Tim had that half-desperate look on his face that Conner knew back from his Tim, the look that he always got before talking to none other than Batman (usually right after he had screwed something up).

So Conner slips in and shuts up and lets Tim do his thing. 

Tim presses a button on the control panel and Conner uses his x-ray vision to look through the walls and watch the conversation happen. Tim's shoulders are already stiff.

"Red Robin," Batman says looking just as non-emotive as ever; Tim nods a greeting in response, hands clasped behind his back as he stands up straighter. "Is there something you want to tell me?" 

Tim seems to take a second to think about it, before shrugging. "Don't know what you're referring to."

"The clone that's currently in your presence," Batman says, looking unimpressed. Conner's been on the receiving end of that face multiple times, usually when he broke the no-meta rule because he wanted to visit Tim or Cass in Gotham.

Definitely worth it. And definitely worth the disappointed-dad look that Superman had given him the next time they saw each other.

"Feigning ignorance really doesn't become you." Batman frowns, and Conner is sure that behind the lenses he's scanning the room. "Superman... alerted me to the fact that someone claiming to be Superboy was hanging around your team. Again."

“That’s true, Batman. He came to our HQ a week ago and has been staying with us since that visit.”

"Hrm. As I understand it, it's the same individual who committed murder and then ran away from the police?" Batman asks, but it's less of a question and more of an affronted statement. The guy really has a thing for the whole justice schtick, Conner can't blame him for hating someone who got away.

"Not really," Tim answers him. "Based on my analysis of the situation, this Superboy is from a different Earth."

Batman is silent for a moment. 

"Explain."

"The Superboy of this dimension was killed - at least we believe he was - in a battle against N.O.W.H.E.R.E. I sent you and A the report a few weeks ago with the full details of the mission. Last week, a new Superboy showed up at our HQ, claiming to be the original Superboy. I ran multiple tests on him as well, testing his claim. 

“He has slightly different DNA than the Superboy from our dimension due to a variation in parental donors on his own Earth. But he does share the same DNA as Superman. Well, 50% of it.”

“Who is the other 50%?”

Conner could tell Tim looked almost nervous as he answered Batman.

“The other half of the DNA came from Lex Luthor.”

“Luthor?” Batman asked, somehow adding about 20 levels of ‘disapproving’ to his comment. “Why didn’t you report this to me sooner?”

“C’mon, B, you trust me. I evaluated the situation and came to the conclusion that he isn’t going to be a danger to us. I swear.”

There’s a pause from the video monitor where Batman seems to run things over in his mind. 

"I trust you. I've let you have a lot of freedom with this team, Red Robin," Batman says. "With the addition of this new... complication, I expect more regular updates on your status and the team's progress. Understood?"

"You got it, B," Tim answers. "Semiweekly at the least."

"Good," Batman says. "And...” he pauses, hands steepling in front of him “A is worried about you. Give him a call."

The monitor clicks off and Tim leans forward, resting against the desk. Conner steps out from behind the pillar he had been hiding behind (for all the good it did, he has no doubts Batman knew he was there the whole time and just didn't care enough to say anything) and heads over to him. 

“What was that all about?” 

“Don’t worry, Superboy,” Tim says drily. “That was Batman giving you the all-clear, at least for now. No need to keep watch for kryptonite in your cereal.”

Conner gives him a worried look. “Should I have been - Tim, holy shit, should I have been worried about that?”

Tim just smirks at him, patting him on the shoulder. “Of course not,” he says, voice completely indicating the opposite. 

Conner groans. Fucking bats. 

 

—

 

"Wait, so how'd we even become friends? From most of what you say, it sounds like we fought all the time," Tim asks one night when they're sitting around the computer in the lounge, multiple tabs open on temporal displacement. Conner isn't there to read the content as much as he is to just listen to Tim talk aloud and make some agreeable noises now and again. 

"Funny story, actually," Conner says. "Uh, you were taken captive and I totally saved your ass and you just couldn’t stop thanking me, and you worshiped the ground I walked on for a while and then we became best friends."

Tim just stares at him. "You know, I might not be the Tim you know, but I can still tell when you're lying to me," he says, voice bone dry.

Conner just sighs. "It was worth a shot.

"Okay, so, long story short - I got cocky during a case we were running sort of together. Poison Ivy started controlling my body, I did some damage, you punched me in the face with kryptonite and I snapped out of it, then we took down the big baddies."

Tim nods, like that one makes more sense to him. Conner's a little offended, actually. 

"And the fighting?" Tim asks.

"Stupid male posturing crap," Conner says. "We were 15, we both thought we knew best for the team, we butted heads. Grew out of it, and became best buds.”

He laughs. “One time, me, you, Cassie, and Ray held elections for who could be the leader of our team. Obviously, Cassie won. She did a better job than any of us would have.” 

That makes Tim smile. “Obviously.” 

They sit there in a comfortable silence for a while. Tim is busy messing with some experiment over in the corner, and Conner leans back, closing his eyes. He lets his senses expand, hearing Bart playing video games on the first floor, Cassie working out with Kiran in the training room as they laugh over something, Miguel talking to Gabriel over the phone as he lays in the hot tub on the deck. The sound of Tim fiddling with the microscope fades into the background as he stretches farther, listening around the city as it turns to dusk. 

For the first time since he got here, he finally feels truly relaxed and calm as everything bleeds into the background.

“How did you die, back in your world?”

Conner jolts, nearly falling over as he loses his balance. “Hell of a question to ask a guy. Don’t I get a dinner invite first?” 

Tim doesn’t even look over at him. “You’ve had dinner here at the tower for the past week, which is basically on me. So how did it happen?” 

Conner runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “A lot of bad shit came together at once and uh... it’s a long story.”

Tim shrugs. “We’ve got time. I’m waiting for the computer to run a few more possible models so we can understand how you came here, but they’re slow. So, story.”

“Well, short story, a building fell on me. It sucked. And normally it would have been fine, but some other stuff happened - and don’t give me that look, I don’t wanna talk about it - but I dropped out of the team for a little bit, so I was kinda out of practice. This psycho shows up, says he's the original Superboy, tries to convince Ma and Pa that it's him, and then throws me through the barn. He called himself Superboy Prime, like that made him any better.

"I got beat up, called the Titans. You all - uh, they all, I guess - showed up, and we kicked the shit out of him. I got pretty badly hurt though.” Conner sighs. “It was a long week.” 

“I - you almost died? And you still went out to fight? God, I get why Nightwing would respect you.”

"Tim, I-"

"Wait, just-" Tim holds up a hand to stop him. He takes some deep breaths, eyes fluttering closed. Conner watches him center himself, watches him regain control over his expression, and the tension lines around his eyes bleed away. "Okay. I'm - okay. I'm listening."

"I was pretty weak from... everything, still, and it just. I'd expended a lot of energy saving Nightwing and flying us both to the center of the activity and it just. Everything collapsed. The building fell on top of me, and -" Conner shrugs. "No more invincibility, I guess."

"Where was I?" Tim asks, quiet.

"Blüdhaven, but you were on your way north when it happened. Deathstroke dropped a nuke and you were helping Nightwing and some other heroes clean up the city." 

"You - you died?" 

"Well, yeah, but -" Conner waves his arms. "Came back. Not dead. Woooooo."

"I couldn't save you," Tim murmurs, staring at his feet. It's quiet enough that Conner doesn't know if someone without superhearing would have caught it, but. Tim says it again, louder. "I couldn't save you again."

The silence in the room is palpable. Tim's shoulders are shaking and Conner wants badly to pull him into a hug, but this Tim seems even more touch-averse than his Tim, so he resists the urge. 

"Man, listen-"

"No, Conner, I-" Tim says, violently punching the wall. His chest is heaving as he whirls around to face Conner. “When you left - fuck, when Superboy left, whatever - I begged you not to go, said we could protect you. We would have. We all would have. I begged you not to leave.

“You said thank you and left anyway.”

“Tim, that’s - it wasn’t me. I’m here now, okay, man? I’m here.” 

Tim just stares at him, and Conner can see the tears that are starting to form in his eyes. There’s a beat of silence and then Tim is shaking his head, wiping a hand across his eyes. It’s not okay, Conner can tell, but he’s willing to let Tim pretend for now.

“Yeah. You are.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah
> 
> EDIT 9/7: added a bit more to this chapter, because 6k just isn’t a big enough update for my tastes i suppose

The mission alarm blaring through the boat shocks Conner out of a very nice dream as he nearly falls out of bed. He’s up in an instant, still almost on autopilot after the years he spent on Young Justice and the Teen Titans. There’s the sound of running footsteps outside his door and Conner joins them, following Miguel up the flight of stairs and up to the roof, where the Teen Titans plane is poised for takeoff.

"Tim - wait," Conner says, grabbing Tim's shoulder as the rest of the Teen Titans run onto the plane. 

"What, Conner?" Tim asks, obviously impatient. The sirens are going off all around the tower, red lights flashing as everyone disappears inside the ship.

“Please be - I should be coming with you,” he says, almost desperately. Because, god, he knows Tim is capable enough to take care of himself, hell, he’s a better fighter than Conner himself strategically, and he has Cassie and the rest of the Teen Titans watching his back.

“Conner, he literally has a kryptonite suit on. Ignoring the fact that you aren’t cleared, that itself means you shouldn’t be within 500 feet of him. We can handle it.”

“Tim, I have a bad feeling about this,” Conner says, glancing at the ship behind Tim. Everyone else has already gotten to their stations, waiting for Tim to join them before flying off. “Just let me come _with you -_ “

“I’m the leader of the team,” Tim growls, turning back to face Conner. “You’re not cleared for duty and we’re going and that’s final.”

He breaks away from Conner’s grip and turns, running into the plane, calling out a, “Please just _stay here_ ,” to Conner as the doors shut and the plane takes off. Conner watches it go, arms folded and biting at the inside of his lip. For a minute, he’s tempted to follow it, but if he ever stands a chance of getting back on the team, he’s going to need to listen to Tim. 

As annoying as that is.

 

—

 

Waiting is terrible. Terrible enough that Conner almost says fuck it again and flies out to help, but Tim’s right. Twister got an upgrade, one that makes him (and Clark, actually) essentially useless, even if kryptonite affects him less than it affects Clark. 

God, he hates it when Tim’s right. And Tim’s nearly always right, until it comes to taking care of himself. Conner wouldn’t be surprised if this dimension’s Tim was just as bad at it, and resolves to figure it out so that he knows if he needs to implement some forced self-care days for him again. 

The hours slip by as Conner waits, eventually putting on the TV for a minute before shutting it off again; it’s worse to see the battle happen knowing he can’t even help than it is to know what’s going on. At least the minute he saw looked like his - _the_ team was kicking Mr. Twister’s ass. Which, of course. 

He finally hears the plane land back on the roof and just goes out the window instead of dealing with the stairs, flying up there as quickly as he can to make sure everyone is okay and safe. 

No one seems to have any major injuries. Miguel is sporting a broken arm, but looks more tired than in pain. 

Conner drags Tim off to the side while everyone else heads to the med bay, just to be sure they’re alright, and makes sure that the glare on his face is both noticeable and _genuinely_ angry.

“Why are you so pissed?” Tim asks, frowning. “I didn’t think you wanted to really be on the team.”

“Well, obviously I’m gonna be stuck here for a while, might as well, right?” Conner says. “I can be out there helping. I wanna fight with you. And don’t give me that bullshit about how I need to lay low again. Fuck, just give me a cowl, no one will recognize me. Or just do some good PR so I can appear in public as Superboy, again. I have some names of people we can contact to run stories, or whatever my agent made them do.”

“You had a - never mind, I don’t wanna know,” Tim says. 

“Tim, let me _prove it to you -“_

“God, Conner, fine! You want to be on the team, right? Let’s fight, then. If I think you’re ready to be on our team, you can join up.” Tim flings the words carelessly over his shoulder and Conner bristles. 

“I’ve been Superboy for three years, I think I know how to -“

“Not in this universe you haven’t,” Tim snaps. “You haven’t worked with our team, you still can’t beat me in a fight with or without your powers -“

“Then let me try again!” 

“Fine. _Fine,”_ Tim says. “Training room. Ten minutes.” He turns and walks away before Conner lets the grin spread across his face.

_Showtime._

 

—

 

Ever since Conner had shown up in this dimension, sparring had become a regular thing for them. It seems to relax Tim, in a way that working with the tech doesn’t. And it’s great for Conner, too, who should probably learn to fight smarter instead of expecting his TTK to do all the heavy lifting. 

But this is an important one. Conner’s never actually had a job interview before, but he’s pretty sure that this is what it would feel like. Impress Tim, get back on the field. Fail, and be stuck on the sideline for longer. While everyone else is out there risking their lives. So, yeah. Job interview.

The dulled red kryptonite lamps that Tim installed are doing their job - and Conner's kind of relearning how good Tim is at what he does and also how much he relies on his TTK during a fight. Fuck, Tim’s fast, and Conner’s got more bruises from the spar than he’s had in his entire life. It doesn’t help that he’s rusty, too. Hanging out in the tower has been chill, but sitting around on the couch doesn’t really lend itself to strategic fighting. 

Plus, he hadn’t been super active with the Teen Titans back on his own Earth for the past few months. Running missions, yes. Actually doing training (beyond simply acting as the brute strength muscle that didn’t have to worry about getting hit with any force) hasn’t really been on his books for a while. 

Conner's back hits the mat and he gasps, wind knocked out of him. Tim shoots him a cocky grin, which only spurs Conner on as he tries to twist and throw Tim off of him

“You should be paying better attention,” Tim lectures, but the grin takes the edge off as he lets Conner out from underneath him. 

“Big words coming from a guy with nothing but a big staff,” Conner says, doing his best to ignore Tim when he doubles over laughing. “Oh, shut up, you know what I meant.”

“I didn’t know you thought so much of my staff, Kon,” Tim says, smirking mischievously. “I’m flattered.” 

“Alright, Mr. Innuendo,” Conner says, rolling his eyes. “First off, that’s my job. Second, let’s see what you can do with just your hands.” He even adds a lecherous wink in Tim’s direction; no one can outdo him with innuendo, even in this weird-ass dimension. This is the hill Conner is willing to die on. 

“Fine by me,” Tim says in return. He collapses the bō staff and tosses it over his shoulder, back into the corner. It clatters to the ground as Tim shifts his stance, tugging at his gloves to straighten them out. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Conner rolls his neck and cracks his shoulders, smiling dangerously over at Tim. “Alright, Wonder Boy. You’re on.” 

Fuck, Tim is _fast_. Conner blocks a punch heading straight for his head and counters with a swipe at Tim’s legs. He effortlessly dodges, flipping backwards and out of Conner’s reach. They circle each other for a moment, Tim’s eyes tracking Conner’s every movement. 

Conner feints to the left before letting himself fall, catching himself on his hands and kicking a leg out to catch Tim’s ankle. He only barely misses, and realizes the bad position he put himself in when Tim uses his momentum against him. His ankle is caught in a strong grip as Tim pulls Conner across the mat, flipping him and digging a knee into his back as he holds his arms down. 

“Point,” Tim says, leaning down to almost whisper it into Kon’s ear. Kon shivers, but it’s easy enough to break out of Tim’s hold and knock him backward. He’s become more flexible in the past few months, and uses this to his advantage, striking out at Tim even as he dances away. 

His last hit connects, causing Tim to cry out in pain as his left arm spasms. Kon lunges at Tim when he stumbles, grabbing his good arm and twisting it down his back. Tim struggles under him uselessly for a moment, enough for Kon to smirk and mutter, “Now, what was it you were saying about points?” 

He still lets Tim throw him off, recovering quickly enough to dodge the flurry of blows coming at him from Tim’s direction. One catches him in the solar plexus and he gasps, but doesn’t falter. He doesn’t have time to recover before Tim’s trying the same move as before, but Conner’s ready. Tim grabs his knee and Conner lets himself become dead weight, falling to the mat and pulling Tim with him.

“Oof,” Tim says, wind knocked out of him, and Conner grabs his arm, pressing them to the mat. 

“Point,” he says, smirking down at Tim before Tim half-heartedly shoves him off.

“Fine, we’re even. Don’t expect to get lucky again,” Tim warns, but there’s a gleam to his eyes and Conner can tell that he’s impressed. 

The adrenaline rushes through his bloodstream as him and Tim stand again, each waiting for the other to make a move. Conner moves first this time, pressing Tim back farther and farther to stop him from getting a counterattack in. 

They’re both breathing heavily, but Conner refuses to let that stop him, refuses to listen to his muscles tensing in protest. He keeps moving doggedly forward, blocking Tim’s attempts to knock him off balance and striking to keep Tim stumbling back. 

And then there’s a leg coming for his chest and Conner is dodging, letting it fly by him, and there’s a half-second where he catches a smirk on Tim’s face, just enough time to realize it’s a feint, before -

His back slams down onto the ground again, but that half second realization keeps him moving, and sure enough Tim’s hands come down right where he was before rolling. He swings around on the mat and kicks out at Tim, connecting with his calf and sending Tim sprawling down on the mat. 

Tim keeps moving too, though, and Conner’s unable to keep him in place. They don’t stand up, starting to just grapple down on the mat. Tim will get the upper hand for a second, and then Conner will overpower him, and then Tim will do some twisty, complicated maneuver and slip out of Conner’s grasp, and on and on. 

He doesn't know when the spar got less about the training and more about who could get on top. Neither one of them can pin the other for longer than three seconds. 

His thoughts drift for only a second, but it’s long enough for Tim to catch him unawares. He lunges at Conner and they roll over multiple times across the mat, ending up with Tim straddling his legs and pushing Conner’s arms down into the floor. 

Conner struggles for a minute, trying to break Tim’s strong grip on his arms. His lungs are screaming as he breathes heavily, failing to get out from underneath Tim. He lets his head fall back against the mat and closes his eyes, trying to seem like he’s given up. 

But Tim’s hands don’t loosen. He doesn’t make a... a stupid quip about beating Conner, again, and when Conner looks up at him, Tim is staring down at him as his smug grin begins to fade, and Conner goes absolutely still. He can make out every bead of sweat on Tim's face, and catalogues every strand of hair that escaped Tim's headband and is falling into his eyes. 

The air around them is tense, the entire room lit up in a dull red glow, silent except for the sounds of their breathing. 

Tim's hands shift minutely, brushing gently against Conner’s shoulders. His eyes, locked on Conner’s, drift down, so slow, and then he’s blinking, almost reeling back as the expression on his face shutters. Conner’s arms are still trapped in Tim’s grip, and Tim releases them like he’s been scalded, almost desperately scrambling off of Conner while he’s trying to seem coordinated.

There’s a flush of pink on Tim’s cheeks, and a pang in Conner’s chest once his weight is gone. Tim’s keeping a careful distance between them while Conner stands up slowly. His shoulders are tight, betraying the tension that must be running through his body. 

“One more go?” Conner says, trying to lighten the awkward air that’s almost suffocating in the room. “Winner takes it all?” He follows it up with a wink and catches the pink on Tim’s cheeks deepen. 

But that’s gone in a heartbeat as Tim runs a hand through his hair, falling back into a defensive stance.

“Fine,” Tim says, clipped, and lunges at Conner. 

They grapple for a bit, Conner dodging a kick at his knee whole trying to catch Tim in a headlock. Tim gasps in pain when Conner’s fist catches him on the hip, but he dances away, dodging the next couple hits as Conner grows increasingly frustrated. Determined to catch Tim, he moves, pushing up explosively and knocking Tim over. He doesn’t let Tim recover before he’s pressing Tim’s back down onto the mat, grabbing his hands and holding them down above Tim’s head. 

“I win,” Conner crows, smirking down at Tim. 

There’s a faint sheen of sweat covering Tim’s face as he frowns back up at Conner, clearly frustrated, but looser than he’s been since he scrambled off of Conner. Him and Conner are both breathing heavily, chests almost brushing from where Conner is holding him down. 

His eyes glint slightly before he glances up at Conner.

“Well, you’re not awful,” Tim allows, staring up at Conner with a slight grin. He shifts a little bit, hands pressing up a little bit against where Conner is holding them to the mat. 

“I guess strength does count.” Conner laughs, pushing down harder on Tim’s wrists. He’s careful not to press too hard (he can still hear Tim’s arm breaking under his hands), but his grip is secure enough that Tim isn’t going to be breaking out of it anytime soon.

Something... shifts in Tim’s face. 

All Conner gets is a hint of a smirk before Tim’s head is moving forward, and then there’s a sharp pain exploding from his nose. 

“Ow, fuck!” Conner says, reeling backwards as his hands come up to grab at his nose. Tim immediately takes his chance, grabbing the bō staff from where it lays on the mat and jabbing it just below Conner’s jaw, barely grazing the skin there as Conner glares up at him balefully. 

“You dick, you cheated,” Conner grumbles, rubbing at his nose. It’s definitely not broken, he’d know, but it still fucking _hurts_ . There’s some blood on his hands when he pulls them away to check. “I’m bleeding, _fuck_.” 

“Sorry,” Tim says, not sounding sorry at all. There’s definitely a grin in his voice as he helps Conner up, and he pads over to the table with the switch on it, flipping it off. 

Conner sighs in relief as the effects of the red kryptonite fades away, pressing absently at his nose as the pain slowly recedes and his healing factor kicks in. Tim tosses him over a towel and he uses it to wipe up the blood. 

“I can’t believe you _headbutted_ me -“ 

“I can't believe you actually let your face get close enough for me _to_ headbutt,” Tim counters. “It was a perfect opportunity.”

Conner mutters a few choice words under his breath. “You’re just a sore loser. Couldn’t stand that I won first.”

“Hey, I didn’t say anything about not using weapons, that was all you. I used the elements of my surroundings to win.”

“Yeah, I’m calling bullshit, Mr. Play-By-The-Rules. And I want a rematch. No staves allowed,” Conner shakes his head. 

“Maybe tomorrow. I do have other work to do, you know,” Tim says, pointing at a basket next to Conner’s feet. “Towel can go in there when you’re finished.”

“Geez, you’d think I’d forced you into this instead of you telling me I had to spar you so you could see if I still got my skills,” Conner mutters, checking his face in a nearby mirror to make sure all the blood is gone before tossing the towel into the basket Tim had indicated. 

“Don’t worry, clone boy, you’ve still got your pretty face,” Tim says, rolling his eyes. 

“Aw, you think I’m pretty?” Conner replies in the sappiest voice he can, batting his eyelids in Tim’s general direction. Tim, predictably, ignores him, which is basically par for the course, so he leans in close, making kissy noises until Tim laughs, shoving Conner’s face away from him. 

“Okay, never mind, I take it back,” Tim says, faintest of smiles on his face as he turns toward Conner. “Hold still.”

His hands are cold on Conner’s face, one hand resting against Conner’s chin as he turns his head this way and that, and the other gently prodding Conner’s nose. There’s barely any sound in the room apart from their breathing; Tim’s hair is falling into his eyes, coming undone from the little ponytail he’d pulled it into at the back of his head. His mouth is scrunched up as he concentrates, and Conner can’t help but let his gaze flick down to Tim’s lips before he catches himself, looking resolutely up at the ceiling. God, he’s so glad that Tim can’t hear heartbeats, because he’s pretty sure that his just kicked up a notch, but Tim is close enough that he might be able to feel it, and Conner can feel his cheeks start to warm. 

“Uh, dude?” Conner finally says, hoping that Tim either doesn’t notice his cheeks getting red or is chalking it up to embarrassment or just a remnant from their fight. 

Tim drops his hands like he’s been scalded. “Oh, sorry, uh, I -“ he stammers, cheeks coloring. “I wanted to see how healed your nose was. It seems to be completely healed already.”

Tim glances down at his watch as the awkward air just floats between them, swiping across the screen, before glancing up at Conner. “Does lunch sound good to you?” he asks. 

Conner’s stomach responds for him, letting out a loud gurgle. He smiles almost sheepishly, nodding at Tim. “I guess I could go for some food.”

 

—

 

"We need to get you a costume and a new name," Tim says.

Conner stops eating, staring at him. "Does this mean I'm cleared for active duty now?"

Tim nods. Conner can't help it; he punches the air a little bit. 

Ever since he'd gotten to this dimension he'd been looking for a fight, but he was out of shape and out of practice, somehow, almost like he'd hadn't been on a team for a few years and just been kicking it around on the farm with Ma and Pa. 

But now...

"Wait, what's wrong with my regular costume? And what’s wrong with Superboy?"

"I don’t know, Conner, are you still fifteen? Also, Superboy isn’t really known as a hero in our dimension. The whole murderer thing kind of soured the populace on this dimension’s Superboy.”

“So we rebrand-“

As for the costume, the jeans and t-shirt? Everything." Tim cuts him off, rambling on past Conner as though he’s not even talking. "It does nothing to hide your identity -" 

"I wear glasses!"

"-it provides no protection-" 

"Dude, I'm invulnerable."

"-and it just looks terrible."

Conner just stares at him, and he really, desperately wants to remind Tim of the time he basically wore a black condom on his head, or the time he moonlighted as _Mr. Sarcastic_ , even, but he doubts this Tim will even believe it. 

“It worked well enough in my universe,” he said instead, folding his arms. “I’m gonna stick with it.”

Tim shoots him an unimpressed look. “New costume, or no deal.” 

“Who died and made you king,” Conner mutters, glaring over at Tim. He doesn’t want a new costume. He’s Superboy, that’s who he’ll always be, and it’s stupid for him to be anything else. He was _made_ to be Superboy. Hell, for the first few months of his life that was the only name he’d had, that and ‘Kid’. Superboy™️; it had a nice ring to it, after all. 

At least, that was until Superman got back in the picture and gave him the name Kon El. 

But Tim doesn’t look like he’s going to budge. He’s got that mulish look on his face that he always gets when he’s not willing to compromise on anything. Conner could probably wheedle him into relenting a little bit, if only through being super fucking annoying until he did, but he doesn’t think it’s worth it. And Tim’s kind of right. 

Superboy doesn’t really fit him anymore. A few years back it was perfect; Conner’s grown up since that. Hell, he’s died and come back and watched people he’s loved die and gotten kicked to a new universe. Maybe he does need a new name. 

Obviously, that doesn’t mean he’s going to make it that easy for Tim to convince him about the costume thing. No one had figured out his secret ID in his reality, so why would anyone here? Especially since Conner Kent doesn’t really exist in this universe at all. 

If he could go through the hellscape that is Smallville High without getting outed as a super, he’s pretty sure he can handle it here. 

“Fine. I’ll go with a new name, but the costume stays,” Conner says, folding his arms. 

"God, fine, let’s just figure out your name, we can come back to this issue later," Tim says, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. 

“Okay, how’s this: Superteen?” 

“No.” 

“Hotboy?” 

“Absolutely not, Conner.”

“How about... Superdude?” 

“Seriously?”

“Fine. Superkid.”

“That’s one’s actually not bad.”

“Really?”

“No, it’s terrible. Conner, you agreed that you need a new name, please take this seriously.”

"Okay, okay," Conner says. He leans back into the seat and rubs at the back of his neck. As fun as it is to come up with terrible suggestions just to piss Tim off, it's a lot harder to come up with a superhero name than he thought it would be. Mostly, because everything's already been _taken_. 

"Does every single name you come up with have to include 'super'?" Tim asks. "Maybe we should try and distance you from that. The last Superboy was widely regarded as a murderer, anyway."

Conner shrugs. "I've only ever been Superboy. I mean, sure, I tried calling myself Superman at the beginning, but it didn't look as good when Clark actually came back from the dead."

"Is there anything else?" Tim says, frowning slightly.

Conner closes his eyes and rests his head back, feeling the cold leather press into his skull. Maybe he could do something Hawaiian. He was there for a really long time, but nothing really stood out while he was there. There were the kids at CADMUS, the - the Newsboy Legion? Whatever they were called - but none of that would sound good. 

Although -

"I've got it," he says, leaping to his feet. "I know what my name's going to be. And don’t get too excited, but I have an idea for a new costume too."

He just knows Tim is smirking behind him. 

“This doesn’t mean you won!” he calls, flipping Tim off as he flies off. He has a few calls to make and a lot of favors to ask, but he thinks he’ll be able to pull it off.

 

\--

 

"Ladies and gentlemen," Tim announces to the room at large, in a complete monotone. Conner rolls his eyes. "Our resident anomaly has finally chosen a superhero name, one that I didn't have to veto, and he was so excited about it he felt the need to call a press conference." 

Cassie laughs. "There's like, six of us in the room, Tim. Show a little pizzazz!"

Tim shoots her a glare. 

"Anyway, here's the newest member of our team: Guardian."

Conner peeks his head out from behind the door. "C'mon, Tim, give it a little more gusto than that!"

Tim just shakes his head and reaches back, grabbing Conner by the arm and hauling him into the room. He stumbles in, still not completely used to the boots, but catches himself in time to ensure that he’s still striking a killer pose for everyone to admire his new suit. 

Gold armor stretches up his legs, melding seamlessly together with the blue armor covering his torso. It glints in the light as he flexes his arms, showing off every side of the armor. The helmet is a little awkward - he’ll have to get some help from someone on fixing it up. A bit too like Dr. Fate for his tastes. Maybe just get a gold mask, kinda like Bart’s goggles, but all one color. It’d be way easier to slip on, for one. 

The shield needs some work, too. Tim had offered to help out with obtaining a denser metal - Conner doesn’t really need it, per se, thanks to the TTK and all, but it helps make him feel more like the real Guardian. Plus, he can wrap his TTK around it and use it as a super-powered wrecking ball if he needs. 

“Wow,” Cassie says, eyeing him over critically. “Where’d you get this from?” 

Conner points at Tim. “I told him about Guardian, and he was apparently still a hero in this universe, just a super long time ago. They still had his old costume in the Hall of Justice, so I borrowed it. Fits pretty good, huh?” 

Cassie makes a non-committal sound, but Miguel gives him a whistle, which makes Conner preen. 

“Who’s Guardian?” Kiran asks, glancing around the room. “I’ve never heard of him.” 

“He was a hero in the 40s -“ Tim starts, giving a Conner a look. “But apparently did a little bit more than that on Conner’s Earth.”

Conner nods. “He was cloned, repeatedly. Each time he died, they woke up another clone to take over. When I knew him, he was the supervisor-slash-security for Cadmus Labs, where I was created. Him and Dubbilex took care of me for a while. A year or so after I broke out, he was killed. It.” Conner swallows. “It was really hard.” 

Kiran is giving him a sympathetic smile when he looks over her, and he tries to muster up one in return. 

“Well, you look great,” Miguel announces, coming up and clapping Conner on the shoulder. “And now you can join us in the field and no one will know that it’s really Superboy out there!”

“Wonder if the villains here are the same as over there,” Bart muses, resting his chin on his hands. “Maybe these ones are more powerful. Might wanna be kinda careful for the time being, you know, since you’re out of practice at all.”

"As long as Prime doesn't show his ugly face around here again, we won’t have a problem," Conner says, frowning. 

"Uh, SB? Mind filling us in a little bit there?" Not-Bart says, and Conner just grits his teeth. 

“Don’t call me that -“ 

"It's the villain who killed Conner," Tim says, interrupting Conner as he rests a palm on his shoulder, squeezing slightly. "In the other timeline."

Bart nods sagely, like he completely understands, and Conner resists the urge to punch him. "I get why you're scared."

"I'm not scared," Conner says, rounding on him. "He didn't kill me, a building fell on me after I had almost died and didn’t have the energy to keep my TTK field up. And he only beat me because I had this weird kryptonite poisoning thing. I kicked his ass from here to kingdom come when I came back. He should be afraid of _me_."

Bart holds up his hands like he's trying to be non-threatening but his face still has that stupid smirky smile that Conner literally hates seeing on a face that reminds him of his best friend - so he turns away because he honestly _might_ punch fake-Bart. 

Not like the snarky little dick doesn't deserve it. 

God, he misses his Bart. Even when Bart was running around not-thinking and getting them into all kinds of trouble. 

“I’m glad you’ll be fighting with us, Conner,” Kiran says, smiling over at him. Her hand comes to rest on Bart’s shoulder and he backs down, smirk relenting a little bit.

Sure, it’s not his team or anything, but for the time being it might just be enough.

 

—

 

Conner gets a rude awakening a few days later, alarms blaring all over the ship as he startles awake and falls out of bed, landing right on his back on the hard floor. He groans and claps two hands over his ears, trying to block out the shrill noise. The alarm stops pretty quickly, only to be replaced by a tinny version of Tim’s voice coming over a loudspeaker, tense and alert.

“Everyone get to the control room. Now.” 

Conner’s up and moving, and even though his brain is a little slower than normal, his body is moving almost on autopilot. He’s in the Guardian suit in record time, and then he’s out the door and running next to Miguel as they head to the control room. 

“What’s up?” he calls over, which Miguel answers with a shrug. 

“Cassie will brief us when we get there.”

They run to the ship and up the gangplank, settling down into their seats.

Well, Miguel does. Conner stands there, sort of awkwardly, because everyone else has a seat, and he doesn’t know where to go. Miguel turns to look at him and grins, patting the seat next to him.

“You’re one of us now, _mi amigo._ Sit.” And so Conner does, smiling back. They both strap in, Conner fiddling with the seatbelt for a bit as he figures it out. Everyone else files in, and the ship takes off, speeding along to wherever they need to be.

“Congrats, Guardian,” Cassie eventually says, smirking over at him. “Welcome to your first Teen Titans mission.” 

Conner starts to open his mouth to say how he’s been on hundreds of these before when the entire shuttle shakes, throwing most of the team to the ground. 

“What was that?” Miguel shouts, getting to his feet. 

“No clue!” Cassie calls back. “It felt like something hit us.” 

Tim dashes past Conner, almost leaping into the chair in front of the monitor. Conner follows, looking over his shoulder as Tim begins pulling up different case files. He’s muttering to himself under his breath, so Conner leaves him to it. The shuttle finally feels stable, and Tanya, Bart, and Kiran have unclipped themselves from their seats, looking wary. 

“Kid Flash and Solstice, I want you two to drop in from above and start distracting him. Guardian and Bunker, wait for us to land and then we’re going to - shit!” Cassie yelps as the ship dips again, whipping around to face Tanya. “What the hell is that?” 

Tanya’s face is tight as her hands grip the wheel, white-knuckled. Tim is leaning over the chair behind her, pressing buttons on the dashboard while Tanya steers them back to a stable course. “We can’t get closer than this. Cinderblock is going to pelt us out of the sky if we try to move in. He’s doing -“ she grunts and the ship dips again, righting itself quickly, “- a pretty good job already.”

Cassie turns toward them again. “Change of plans. Guardian and I are dropping in and we’re going to make a hell of a lot of noise. Solstice, carry Kid Flash in behind us. I want you both to start wearing him down while me and Guardian throw some heavy punches. Red Robin, figure out what will take him down the quickest. Power Girl, back us up and get big if you need to. Everyone understand?” 

Conner nods along with everyone else. His heartbeat is thrumming, absolutely dancing with excitement and adrenaline. He’s missed this, missed being part of a team, missed fighting and protecting people. 

It all starts off just as it should. Conner plays off of Cassie’s lead, doubling down and following up her punches with some blasts of his own. It’s just like it was back in his dimension; might not be the best time to be considering it, but it is nice to see that they still work together almost flawlessly, playing off of one another easily. 

Bart and Kiran are doing damage from a distance. Bart’s been able to keep Cinderblock disoriented from the get-go, running in circles around him and keeping Cinderblock turning as he tries to get a bead on him. 

“Guardian! You’re up!” Cassie yells, and her lasso wraps around Cinderblock’s neck. He chokes and leans back - Conner takes half a second to wonder _how_ a being made of stone can choke - and then the opportunity opens.

Conner pushes off the ground and flies fast, punching through Cinderblock’s back. Stone rains down as he backs off, watching Cinderblock begin to crumple. 

“Erosion’s a killer, huh!” he calls, resting in midair. 

“Don’t be too cocky, Guardian!” Tim yells, perching on the roof of a building and staring intently at the stone on the ground. “Look!”

Sure enough, the stone is starting to shake, moving slowly back toward Cinderblock’s body, fusing back together as they reform and close the hole that Conner had made through his chest. 

“What worked last time you fought him?” Tim snaps, narrowly dodging a rock thrown in his direction. 

“He can regenerate,” Conner says, “but not if he’s in a million pieces.”

“So, what, break him down as much as we can and make sure the pieces stay separate?” 

Conner nods. “Or just... take off the head. Gar - Beast Boy and Wonder Girl wore him down and then someone else knocked his head clean off. Didn’t get back up after that.”

“Good. We’re doing that. Kid Flash, kick up the dust. Guardian, keep his eyes on you. I don’t want him to see me coming. Solstice, wait for my cue to blind him. Red, Miguel, Power Girl… just keep hammering until he breaks. Go!”

They scatter just as another rocks impacts near where they were standing, sending shrapnel flying in all directions. Bart starts running in circles around him again, sending small tornadoes of dust up into the air. Cinderblock screams, in anger and confusion, and Conner breaks through, flying back and forth as he tries to do as much damage as he can. It’s not an insignificant amount. 

Tim is rolling small bombs into Bart’s wake and they catch in the draft, floating up and detonating against Cinderblock as he waves his arms around. Miguel is blocking Solstice while she gets ready, protecting her from the dust and rock. Power Girl is setting something up with Solstice from behind the psionic brick wall, looking determined. 

There’s a nod from her, and then Solstice rises. 

“Eyes shut!” Conner hears in his comms, and drops. A bright blast of light that he can even see from behind his closed eyelids pulses, and he hears Cinderblock cry out. And then he hears Cassie, and opens his eyes just in time to see her knock Cinderblock in the back of the head, completely shattering his neck as his head flies clean off of his body. It crashes to the ground with a reverberating thud, and his body collapses to a knee, coming down hard as Conner scrambles out of the way. On impact, it shatters, bits of rock flying everywhere as each of them dive for cover.

The streets are silent. It’s over.

 

—

 

Cleanup, as always, is a bitch.

“Here,” Tim says, shoving a bag full of rocks each to Conner and Bart. “Go distribute these… away from here. I’m going to get a remote Batplane to carry the head to Star Labs. They can monitor it from there.”

Conner and Bart nod, and both of them take off in different directions. Conner upends the bag in spurts, making sure that the pieces are far enough away that Cinderblock will have a hell of a time trying to get back together. He makes it back at around the same time as Bart, and everyone starts walking back toward the ship. 

“Great job, everyone,” Cassie says as they head up the gangplank, collapsing into their chairs. “We’ll have a full debrief back at base, so rest for now. It’ll be about five minutes until we’re back.”

Conner slumps into his seat, rubbing a hand over his face. He’d forgotten how much work it could be, he realizes, but the adrenaline running through his veins was better than any drug. He turns back, toward where Tim is sitting, and reaches over to clap him on the shoulder.

“Hey, man, thanks for letting me fight.”

Tim shakes his head. “I didn’t do anything. You proved you could hold your own out there.”

“Yeah, well, still. Thanks. And it was fun to fight with you again,” Conner says, before remembering. “Well, not totally again. You kind of move the same as my Tim, though. Similar, yeah? You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, Conner,” Tim says, and there might be a hint of a smile on his face (or it might be Conner’s wishful thinking). “It _was_ fun.”

 

—

 

Conner's just beginning to get used to this weird new dimension where everyone's a bit off from what he remembers when everything starts to fall to shit. Him and Tim argue, Cassie storms off (again), Bart threatens to run to the future (Conner dares him to and is genuinely disappointed when he chooses to stay around), and Kiran and Miguel and Tanya do nothing but sit there and laugh at them while they yell.

It's just like Young Justice, except for the fact that Conner sometimes feels like he has no clue who these people are and he's always 100% ready to punch Bart in the face without even needing an excuse. (Although, to be fair? He might not have wanted to actually punch his Bart, but some of that frustration is the same.)

Tim leaves shortly after Cassie and is quickly followed by a rush of air as Bart leaves the building. Kiran rolls her eyes fondly and follows at a much slower pace, but Conner knows that she basically just rides along in Kid Flash's slipstream until he stops. Miguel and Tanya are whispering something, but Conner doesn't care enough to focus his hearing over there. 

Instead, he heads back to the living room and flips on the TV, because there's nothing better than a little quality television to get your mind off of things, or so he's been told. 

There's a rerun of old  _ Wendy _ episodes on, so he settles in for a night filled with werewolves, stalking, and some terrible high school drama. 

A few hours pass as Conner relives being a stupid teenager obsessed with Wendy, grabbing a bag of popcorn and using his heat vision to heat it up while Wendy basically does the coolest cool-ass shit ever.

Bart and Kiran are the first back, curling up on the couch in the corner and whispering softly to each other. Conner tunes them out easily enough. 

Miguel comes back next, sitting down right next to Conner and grinning. “Hey,  _ amigo _ ,” he says, clapping Conner on the shoulder. “You like  _ Wendy _ ?” 

Conner nods. “Used to be obsessed with it, when I was younger.”

Miguel laughs. “Me too. It was such a stupid show, but I loved it. Used it as an escape.” 

“Rough childhood?” Conner asks, wincing when it comes out a bit more snarky than he meant. Thankfully, Miguel doesn’t seem offended. He picks at a strand on the couch, smiling absently.

“Not really. My parents were supportive of the gay thing and, later, the superpowers thing. The rest of the village wasn’t thrilled, but at least they never talked shit about me when I was around.

“Still, it’s hard being one of the only gay boys in your town. Add in the superpowers that I got, and well.  _ Wendy _ was a good escape. Plus, the Mexican voice actors are way funnier than the actual actors.

“Gabby was the first guy I met who didn’t treat me any different. And he didn’t care when I got superpowers. Thought it was awesome, but he wasn’t creepy about it, you know?”

Conner nods. Back in Hawaii, he’d had girls fawning over him left and right. It didn’t matter who he actually was, they only cared about him because he was Superboy. Tana had been the only one who had looked beyond that, but now he was old enough to get how fucked up that whole relationship was. Knockout only wanted him for his powers, and she messed with his head so bad that he honestly hoped she was stuck back in his own reality with no chance of getting out. It’d be what she deserved. 

“So how come you came up here?” Conner asks.

A soft, sad smile forms on Miguel’s face. “Gabriel fell into a coma right after my powers started to develop. I... didn’t handle it well. I dropped out of school, didn’t talk to my parents, and then I just left. The doctors said that they didn’t know if he would ever wake up, and I couldn’t just sit there.

“So, I came and found Red, signed up for the Teen Titans, and the rest is history.”

Kiran comes in with Bart hanging on around her shoulders, followed closely by Tanya and Cassie, talking quietly amongst themselves. They don't even go for a chair, instead opting for the floor. 

Tim's the last one back and he walks in with his face paler than normal. 

"Turn on the news," he says, frowning. 

"Man, can't it wait? The episode is almost over," Conner replies, holding the remote a little tighter. 

Tim shoots him a stony glare. "Trust me, you're going to want to see this ASAP."

Bart has the remote before Conner can even move, sticking his tongue out at him before he flicks the channel to The Daily Planet’s TV stream. 

There’s a blurry shot of Superman, squaring off against Solomon Grundy.

“You’re making me miss Wendy to watch Big Blue fight the big gray idiot? Really, Tim?” Conner asks, folding his arms and glaring at him. 

Tim shakes his head. “Just... just watch.”

Which is when everything, truly, goes to shit. 

Superman is destroying everything in the area as he fights Grundy, seemingly not caring about the collateral damage. Buildings around him are falling as he punches Grundy through them, debris and plaster and stone raining down on the civilians who weren’t lucky enough to get out of the way fast enough. 

The newscasters sound stunned, voices stuttering as they try to explain what’s going on. Conner is watching with his heart in his throat, because he  _ knew _ that Big Blue seemed off the first time he met him. And yeah, sure, everyone in this dimension is a little bit off, a little bit shifted to the right, but this is... this is the antithesis of everything Superman stands for, the antithesis of everything Conner tried so hard to become. 

He only distantly hears Tanya say “what the hell?” because he’s noticing it too. A patch of gray on Clark’s skin, what looks like bones shifting below the surface of his arm, 

“We have to get out there,” Conner says, standing up and looking beseechingly over at the others. “We can help those people, we -“

He trails off when he notices everyone else averting their gaze, before turning to Tim, who’s standing there frowning as he refuses to make eye contact with Conner.

“What do you know?” Conner asks, voice low. Tim swallows, chewing on the inside of his lip. 

“Batman says we’re not supposed to get involved,” Tim mutters, knuckles white as his hand clenches into a fist. 

“Screw that,” Conner growls, folding his arms. “I’m going anyway. I’ll take the hit when Batman gets pissy.”

Tim throws his hands out to the side. “Conner, I don’t want to sit on the sidelines and do nothing, but it’s Batman’s orders! We can’t just ignore them and do whatever the hell we want.” 

“Why not?” Conner asks, brow furrowed. “Who cares what he said? People are going to get hurt if we don’t step in.” 

“I -“ Tim starts, looking frustrated and glancing around at the rest of the team.

“Tim.” Cassie comes up to stand next to Conner. “We can’t just... just stand by while people are being hurt.” 

Tim starts pacing. “

Conner grabs Tim’s shoulders and forces him to stop walking, bodily turning him around to face him. “Back in my dimension, Young Justice and the Teen Titans were started because we didn’t listen to our mentors. Tim, come on, you  _ know _ that we have to be out there. You’ve lied to Batman before. We have to go.” 

He knows he’s won when Tim’s mouth tenses briefly and then relaxes, folding over into a determined line. “You’re right,” he says, and he’s looking at Conner but he’s talking to everyone. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?”

Conner shoots him a grin, clapping him on the shoulder, and Tim gives him a small smile back. He turns toward the rest of the team, voice clipped. “Everyone in the ship, five minutes or less. We’re going to go in quietly and see what we can help with on the sidelines.”

 

—

 

They’re actually in the ship in five minutes, wheels up in seven as Tim punches in the coordinates for Metropolis. The air inside is tense as they all listen to updates from the JL communicator installed in the ships audio port; Bart’s leg jitters more the closer they get, and even ever-calm Kiran is looking more stressed out than Conner’s ever seen her. The jet is fast, but Conner knows he’s faster, and it takes all his self-control not to grab Cassie by the arm and drag her outside the ship so that they can fly over and let the others catch up. 

The waiting is excruciating, made worse by the constant strain that they can hear in the voices of the League members over the comms. By the time they touch down just outside of Metropolis, Conner is barely holding back, standing with his arms crossed over his Guardian chest plate as he stands in front of the door. 

“Okay,” Tim says, pressing the side of his mask so that his lenses slide down over his eyes. “Do not engage Superman or Grundy, if he happens to pop back up. Our only job is to evacuate civilians before the buildings come down. Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Guardian... you three take the outer perimeter, you can move the fastest. Bunker, do what you can to support the closer buildings while me and Power Girl pull people out and get them somewhere safe. Solstice, I want you checking out the buildings for people before we go in.”

Conner nods grimly, following along behind Cassie and Bart as they step out of the ship and head for the outer reaches of Metropolis, starting at the edge of the blast. Unbidden, they all curve off in different directions, mentally carving up the space as they work to get as many civilians out as possible. The buildings are all starting to crack, debris falling down through the streets and narrowly missing Conner as he rushes to check for survivors in each building. He dodges out of the way of a slab of granite, ducking through a hole in the building to his left. 

A woman and her son are sitting inside, eyes welling up with tears when they see him. “Please, please get us out!” they call, and Conner can see how precarious their position is. The floorboard is crumbling underneath them, and any step might send them tumbling down seven flights to the ground below. 

“Don’t move,” he yells back, flying around the broken poles and walls sticking through the building. It’s easy enough to convince them both to hold his hand, and with a thought redirects his TTK to wrap around them all. They all lift up off of the ground and the kid gasps, tightening his grip on Conner’s hand. Deftly, he maneuvers them through the holes in the floor, shooting out of a gap in the third floor wall and setting them down gently outside of the blast range. 

He’s surprised when the woman hugs him, whispering a quiet “thank you,” but she lets go quickly and grabs her son, hurrying off in the opposite direction of all the destruction. 

Conner flies back through the buildings, grabbing everyone he can and dropping them down where they won’t be at risk of getting stuck under falling debris or collapsing buildings. 

He can’t detect any more heartbeats in the falling buildings, so he presses in on his comms and lets the rest of the team know. 

“Good,” Tim says, sounding a little out of breath. “Reconvene at the meeting point.”

The team reunites outside the city, Cassie dropping Tim off on the ground and Miguel and Bart show up with Kiran tight on their tail. Conner grabs Tanya by the arm as he flies by, carrying her through the streets as they all head out.  

“What -“ is all Cassie gets out before they all hear a muted thump maybe 100 paces away from them. Conner spins on his heel, and all of them instinctively shift into a defensive stance. 

But it’s just Clark. 

Superman turns, and Conner flinches back instinctively, even though there’s no way that he can recognize him under the Guardian mask. No, there’s... there’s something in Clark’s eyes.  _ Kal’s _ eyes. Something vindictive, something angry, something  _ bad _ , and Conner doesn’t know what to do about it. He shares powers and 50% of his genetic sequence with the guy, but he knows that there’s next to nothing he or anyone else will be able to do if Cla- Kal, turns on them. 

He can’t even  _ recognize _ Clark under whatever the hell is in Superman’s eyes. 

And, terrifyingly, he's looking a little bit more like Bizarro with each passing second. Not totally Bizarro, but the grey skin is a classic, although the crystal-shaped things growing out of his hands and arms are kinda... weird...

_ Doomsday _ .

"Conner?" Cassie says, raising an eyebrow. "What's going on?"

He can barely pull his gaze away from the man standing not far enough away from them, watching them calculatingly, teeth bared as he crouches down, on the verge of flying away. 

"That's - he looks like Doomsday, his skin looks like Doomsday's."

"What's a Doomsday?" Cassie asks. 

Bart shivers. "Doesn't sound like something that's going to have a happy ending."

Everyone is looking at Conner curiously now; even Bart has gone silent and has his gaze fixed on him. Tim looks the most unfazed out of all of them, and it's only because Conner knows him so well that he can see the tension cutting through him. 

"Doomsday is a villain, it's some sort of ancient Kryptonian monster that causes nothing but destruction. Back on my Earth," Conner can't help but glance back at Kal, watching him warily as Superman turns away and flies off, somewhere. "It killed Superman."

The entire team trades concerned looks. Cassie looks determined where Tim looks almost... calculating. Miguel is staring at the fading red and blue blur in unconcealed horror, gaze flickering between the sky and Conner himself. 

"That's - that's why I was made, that's what  _ killed _ Superman the first time around," Conner says, unable to tear his eyes away. 

There's a pregnant pause, which is (predictably) broken by Bart.

"Wait, wait, hold on. So you're saying that Superman looks like he’s turning into some super-evil, super-powerful villain?” 

Conner ignores him, turning toward Tim instead. “This is -.”

And then everything goes a bright, brilliant green, and Conner is yelling as he collapses to the ground as his surroundings fade to black. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos’ are appreciated! apols for any errors i wrote most of this a year or so ago, it’s not betaread, and i’m also fundamentally lazy when it comes to editing

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading, concrit appreciated, love comments 
> 
> how about that new young justice comic it knocked my socks off :')
> 
> also you can follow me on tumblr @connerkcnt


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